Aaron Jagdfeld, chief executive of Generac Holdings, appeared on Bloomberg Television Tuesday evening to discuss how the company is responding to President Trump's trade war and the recently announced 90-day de-escalation period in U.S.-China trade tensions.
Jagdfeld, who leads one of America's largest generator manufacturers, highlighted the company's long-term strategy to reduce reliance on Chinese supply chains. He outlined that Generac has been reducing supply chain exposure to China since President Trump's first term and will reduce 10% exposure to 5% in 18 months.
"So today, less than 10% of our supply chain comes from China, but that'll be less than 5% in 18 months based on plans we've already had in motion. And this will obviously accelerate those. And where we go next is kind of the question, right?" Jagdfeld said.
He continued, "So where are there's going to be winners and losers as companies like ours rotate their supply chains into different countries? You know, India has always held a lot of promise as a supply chain, as a trade partner for the U.S., I think that will probably start to come to fruition more, you know, more meaningfully in the next year or two."
Earlier this week, the U.S. and China announced a breakthrough trade agreement that temporarily lowered tariffs on each other's products for 90 days. The U.S. dropped its 145% on Chinese goods to 30%, while China lowered levies from 125% to 10%.
Goldman illustrates the rollercoaster ride of the tit-for-tat trade war between the U.S. and China in recent months, as well as the temporary cooling period aimed at de-escalating tensions.
On Wednesday morning, Goldman analyst Jerry Shen told clients, "We Now Expect the Effective Tariff Rate to increase by 13pp."
Trump's tariff shock is working. However, friend-shoring and or re-shoring will take time. This is a great start because we've described some of the critical supply chains America needs to secure before the 2030s... Read Here.
What are the national security implications of having critical backup power generation supply chains overseas? This might be one of those supply chains that need to be re-shored.
