Factbox-US executives weigh risks from proposed Trump tariffs

(Reuters) – Top executives at many U.S. companies are preparing for the impact from President-elect Donald Trump fulfilling his campaign promise of raising tariffs, a move that could disrupt supply chains and worsen inflationary pressures.

Here is the commentary from some C-suite executives, mostly in the run up to the elections:

Company Commentary

Tesla “…It doesn’t make sense to invest a lot in

Mexico if (heavy tariffs are imposed on vehicles

produced in the country),” said CEO Elon Musk.

Dollar “…We have long-standing contingency plans to

Tree diversify our supply chain in a timely and

cost-effective manner. We also have the

flexibility to adjust product specs and price

points to address any changes in the market,” said

Chief Operating Officer Mike Creedon, who has now

become the interim CEO.

Axon “We’ve certainly lived in an environment of

tariffs before. And so our philosophy is generally

to be pretty flexible,” said CFO Brittany Bagley.

KKR “We spend most of our time here focusing on things

that we can control. That’s (tariffs) not one of

them,” said CFO Robert Lewin.

Zebra “The team is actively working on mitigation plans

Technolo for some of the new tariffs that are coming into

gies place. And we continue to actively work with our

supply chain partners,” said CFO Nathan Winters.

Tapestry “Tariff regime is changing over time. So, we’re

pretty well-versed in managing through this,” said

CFO Scott Roe.

IFF “Those tariffs could actually intuitively be

advantageous to our overall business broadly,”

said Chief Financial and Business Transformation

Officer Glenn Richter.

Under “It will be interesting to see how things develop

Armour with whether we still have a split Congress or

not,” said CFO David Bergman.

Steven “We have been planning for a potential scenario in

Madden which we would have to move goods out of China

more quickly. We’ve worked hard over a multi-year

period to develop our factory base and our

sourcing capability in alternative countries like

Cambodia, Vietnam, Mexico, Brazil, et cetera,”

said CEO Edward Rosenfeld.

“You should expect to see the percentage of goods

that we source from China to begin to come down

more rapidly going forward.”

Elf “We certainly have run a number of scenarios for

beauty potential tariffs. It’s still too early to tell

what level those may come in, but we have a

playbook and we have a number of levers at our

disposal,” said CFO Mandy Fields.

Source: Earnings calls

(Reporting by Niket Nishant, Shivansh Tiwary and Manya Saini in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)