With summer in full swing in the United States, retail executives are sweating a different season. It’s less than 22 weeks before Christmas, a time when businesses that make and sell consumer goods usually nail down their holiday orders and prices.
But President Donald Trump's vacillating trade policies, part of his effort to revive the nation’s diminished manufacturing base and to reduce the U.S. deficit in exported goods, have complicated those end-of-year plans. Balsam Hill, which sells artificial trees and other decorations online, expects to publish fewer and thinner holiday catalogs because the featured products keep changing with the tariff — import tax — rates the president sets, postpones and revises.
