Good morning. Geoff Colvin here, sitting in for Sheryl. Amid all the uncertainties swirling around the November elections, odds are strong that CFOs will face intensifying trade wars no matter who wins, as I explain in a recent article.
Brace for broader, higher tariffs—a hidden tax that imposes extra costs on consumers or businesses or both. After 70 years of U.S. negotiations with other countries that reduced U.S. tariffs to their lowest levels ever, President Donald Trump in 2018 imposed aggressive new tariffs on products from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, India, Mexico, and South Korea. Most of those countries quickly launched retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. A study by researchers at several universities found that in the first year or so, U.S. consumers and firms that bought imports lost $51 billion.
