“We’re watching it very, very carefully, but we have a lot of operational levers that we can pull,” Brown said in an interview. “We have a lot of factories in the U.S. and could bring some of that product back to the U.S.”
Hopefully management holds off on layoffs so we can have people available to staff MX and CA goods being manufactured in the states!
Speaking of leaders making uninformed decisions without a working plan and calling it a win, does anyone know what short-sighted new initiatives Tire King has schemed up lately?
You also can't get someone out of a cult by screaming, "You're in a cult!" at them or calling them names. You find out what road took them there by listening to them. Then maybe they will listen to you.
Ummm, they didn't blink, the US did but is loudly and falsely claiming the opposite. The 'deals' with Canada and Mexico are actually the status quo before all the noise. Same basic end-state as the Colombia deportation matter.
Back to topic: Significant supply chains don't shift quickly. It is not like 3M has copies of factories sitting around in different countries ready to take volume at the drop of a hat. Didn't we all learn this lesson during the COVID disruptions?
Mexico and Canada both blinked quickly and are negotiating deals to prevent the tariffs. Good thing 3M took a long term perspective and did not move any plants. Well done!
The current tarriffs are just negotiating tools. It would be foolish to do any long term manufacturing relocations based on what’s in the news today.
Guess we will wait and see what happens over the next few days after we hear from BB. Mexico has a month to decide now and Canada either gets hit with 50% tonight (which will make it cheaper to move production back to the US or in Asia for even cheaper.) or they beef up the border and get another month to prepare. I understand the Asia position but Trump will just tariff them too.
Yeah, no company is going to re-shore any of this stuff. It’s still far cheaper for a company to build a new plant in like Vietnam, or some other country which doesn’t currently have tariffs. Apple learned this during the orange man’s last reign and have moved a large portion of their manufacturing operations to India.
The likelihood of this is virtually zero.
Historically, tariffs have not resulted in autarky, but rather companies stop producing goods that rely on foreign-produced elements because the consumer is unwilling to pay the higher price associated with inefficiently making the goods locally.
It's possible that 3M has the market cornered on certain things, and those customers need to buy from us whatever the price, but if you think that higher prices will result in a higher sales volume you're delusional -- we will lose some customers, for sure.
Lower volume means less revenue, plus we definitely weren't sending production to MX and CA because it was more expensive to produce there than back home.
Anyone who thinks tariffs will help US manufacturing has lead poisoning.