Trump’s “chaotic” tariff rollout is stressing out businesses

Fortune

President Donald Trump's tariffs have become a massively disruptive feature of the U.S. economic landscape. To figure out how much they owe, companies need to know their way around an 18-pound book with thousands of rules.

Transcript

00:00Trump's recent executive orders on tariffs have produced a scramble in the business world

00:05because they come suddenly, and you have to adapt to them quickly, and you have to find

00:09out what day they go into effect. And that's not always clear. When you expand tariffs to

00:13a lot of countries where they didn't exist before, that's suddenly a lot of work and money.

00:24For businesses, it means a lot of paperwork,

00:26stress, and simply just keeping up on top in this landscape where tariffs are shifting quickly.

00:32They have to figure out if they're importing something, what the tariff rate is, and how

00:36they're going to pay it. In my reporting, I talked to lawyers and customs brokers, and all of them

00:41sounded a little bit stressed out, frankly, because the biggest challenge for them is simply trying to

00:46keep up. They said there's been a lot of people on the White House website all hours of the day

00:50trying to figure out what the given rules are and getting ready to spring into action with paperwork.

00:54I've heard from customs brokers and their clients who say the way the White House is rolling out

01:00this particular batch of tariffs is chaotic, frankly. There's a lot more of them than there used to be,

01:05and the way they're announcing them is somewhat willy-nilly, rather than sort of giving notice,

01:10providing a fact sheet, and rolling it out in an orderly way. And it's very hard for businesses to keep up.

01:15Thank you, guys.

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