What the Trump Administration’s Tariffs Mean for Your Business

President Donald Trump’s tariffs have upended world trade. And they are spawning haggling over international commerce — even between the U.S. and its closest allies. With the global economy on notice, the business community is feeling the uncertainty, as the Trump administration calibrates just how much executive power it can wield on trade without congressional input. Meanwhile, litigation has hit U.S. dockets and the World Trade Organization.

What’s in store for businesses in the days and weeks ahead? Are the tariffs enforceable? Will Congress or court cases ultimately prevail against them? And how are companies and consumers responding?

Join The Sidley Podcast host and Sidley partner, Sam Gandhi, as he speaks with two of the firm’s thought leaders on these issues — Ted Murphy, a co-leader of the firm’s Global Arbitration, Trade and Advocacy practice, and Andy Shoyer, a partner in that practice. Together, they discuss President Trump’s goals for his tariffs, the impact on the business community and our trading partners, and what litigation is taking shape in response. 

Executive Producer: John Metaxas, WallStreetNorth Communications, Inc.

Transcript

Sam Gandhi:
He called it Liberation Day. President Trump’s tariffs have upended world trade, and they’re spawning haggling over international commerce, even between the U.S. and its closest allies. With the global economy on notice, the business community is feeling the uncertainty, as the Trump Administration calibrates just how much executive power it can wield on trade without congressional input. Meanwhile, litigation has hit U.S. dockets and the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Ted Murphy: You do have to step back, and the first question you need to ask is do you think this is a temporary blip on the radar screen, or do you think this is part of a long-term trend, and if you think it’s part of a long-term trend, then we need a new plan for the future.

Sam Gandhi: That’s Ted Murphy, a co-leader of Sidley’s Global Arbitration, Trade, and Advocacy practice.

Andy Shoyer: We see our clients in at least six of the seven stages of grief. I would skip denial because I think most of our clients are too smart for that. President Trump presaged a lot of this in his first administration.

Sam Gandhi: And that’s Andy Shoyer, a partner in that practice. What’s in store for businesses in the days and weeks ahead, are the tariffs enforceable, will Congress or court cases ultimately prevail against them, and how are companies and consumers responding? We’ll find out on today’s podcast.

From the international law firm Sidley Austin, this is The Sidley Podcast, where we tackle cutting-edge issues in the law and put them in perspective for business people today. I’m Sam Gandhi.

Hello, and welcome to this edition of The Sidley Podcast. Ted and Andy, great to welcome you to Episode 47 of the podcast.

Ted Murphy: Thanks, Sam. It’s great to be here.

Andy Shoyer: Thanks, Sam.

Sam Gandhi: In April, President Donald Trump set a deadline for countries to make trade deals with the United States or risk substantially higher tariffs, and that original deadline expired on July 9, but the goalpost has moved. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is now warning the so-called reciprocal tariffs, some of which are levies as high as 50 percent, will revert back to their April rates on August 1.

And Bessent told CNN recently that the administration would be sending out letters to 100 smaller countries, saying if you don’t move things along, then on August 1, you will boomerang back to your April 2 tariff level. The President followed that a day later by announcing that South Korea and Japan will face a 25 percent tariff, come August.

Ted, give us some clarity here. What’s the Trump Administration’s goal with respect to these levies, and how real are some of the announcements on the tariffs? Most traders in the market still think of this as the TACO trade, meaning Trump always chickens out, and they’re not sure exactly how much of this is real and how much of this is really to take with a grain of salt.

Ted Murphy:
I don’t know about clarity, but I can certainly offer some comments as to what we think is going on here, and we think it’s important to start with the fact that President Trump’s view of tariffs has evolved from his first term. In his first term, he did impose tariffs on other countries, like China, and on other industries, like the steel and aluminum industry, for example, but in those cases, it really was sort of his historical view of tariffs, which tariffs are very useful as leverage in negotiations.

Because in both of those instances, during his first term, those tariffs led to agreements, so, with China, something called the Phase One agreement that actually ultimately sort of fizzled out, for various reasons, at the end of President Trump’s first term, and in the steel and aluminum context, it resulted in a number of agreements, quota-type agreements, with various countries to limit the amount of steel and aluminum they ship to the United States. This time, it’s different. While he obviously still believes that tariffs could be very useful as leverage in negotiations, he also now believes in tariffs for the sake of tariffs, right?
Tariffs are going to make America rich. The United States was never as prosperous as we were in 1896, when we had, you know, 30 or 40 percent tariff. So, I think it’s important to understand sort of what tariffs, you know, we’re talking about here, and we think, again, they fall really into sort of two buckets, tariffs that are useful for leverage in negotiations, and then tariffs to try to drive production really back to the United States, and there’s sort of overlap, obviously, between these, but those are the two buckets of tariffs we have being bandied about today.

Sam Gandhi:
Andy, how are the U.S.’ major trading partners responding to these tariffs, or at least the threats of them?

Andy Shoyer:
Sam, our trading partners are really grumpy, and they’re trying to make good political as well as economic decisions. President Trump knows that he has huge leverage because, and Sam, we’ve talked about this in previous podcasts, U.S. consumers consume. Chinese consumers don’t, and Indians don’t yet. They have significant middle classes, but we consume at a world-beating level, and that’s what President Trump has as his leverage.

So, you see a real range of some of our trading partners, like Vietnam, pushed relatively quickly to respond to the pressure, but what they got was a strange amalgam of half-commitments and really perhaps self-defeating commitments with respect to the risk of Chinese goods being transshipped through Vietnam.

So, we saw that. The European Union is really still trying to figure out the right approach to the bullying, even though, again, they realize that they want to continue to have meaningful access to the U.S. market. And so, that’s been difficult. So, we’ve seen some relatively smaller trading partners come in, but President Trump, interestingly, and this is very much aligned with what Ted had said, President Trump has appeared to be willing to accept relatively superficial gains in these agreements.

And so, it’s strange in that, at the end of the day, and we don’t know whether August 1 will be the end of the day, it’s unclear whether he will have achieved one of his stated goals, which is to eliminate the trade deficits that the United States maintains with lots of our trading partners.

Again, a lot of people have questioned the legitimacy of his latest strike against Brazil, a country with which we have a trade surplus, and so, I think our trading partners are befuddled and trying again to make good political decisions, so they don’t look weak domestically, while securing meaningful access in the U.S. market.
Sam Gandhi: Has the U.S. budged on any of this? We saw the report yesterday morning about Nvidia announcing that they’re able to sell their chips in China, and so, is the administration kind of bending on critical things that support the U.S. economy, or are they taking a much harder line?

Andy Shoyer: Yes, bending on Nvidia was a difficult choice, and I think President Trump is seeing significant backlash. Remember, Sam, that was an issue with respect to export controls. Of course, that wasn’t a question of applying tariffs, but the President does, as Ted said, he loves tariffs, and he tends to conflate the two.
So, for example, he has now threatened Russia with tariffs. That’s an odd choice just because we buy so little from Russia. So, it’s unclear, but the President seems to feel that tariffs are his greatest weapon, even if, as in the case of the Russian economy, we just don’t buy a lot in terms of what we import. So, he has made interesting choices, and the one with Nvidia, that will be a tough one.

Sam Gandhi: Ted, what do you think about the effects of these tariffs?

Ted Murphy: I guess I’d start with I believe the Trump Administration believes they are not inflationary, and the economists within the White House have written about this extensively that the tariffs that President Trump imposed on China during his first term, you know, the so-called Section 301 China tariffs, which were upwards of 25 percent, really weren’t that inflationary in the United States, and that was because the exporters absorbed some of that tariff, the currency actually absorbed a significant portion of that tariff. So, they believe that the tariffs are not necessarily inflationary.

Now, I think that goes against sort of the conventional wisdom. In addition, this time around, President Trump is imposing significant tariffs, not just on one country but on lots of countries. So, I think the inflationary impact of these tariffs, I think we’re just starting to see them trickle through or filter through the economy now, but I think that will likely continue, particularly if he makes good on his threat to impose significant additional tariff on sectors, as he is proposing to do, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, copper, etcetera, as well as these reciprocal tariffs, August 1.

Sam Gandhi: What about indirect effects of these tariffs, like the tariffs on steel and aluminum, and how that’s going to affect the U.S. economy?

Ted Murphy: I think there’s a lot of indirect effects. The greatest, I think, indirect effect is on the uncertainty, right, the companies dealing with the uncertainty. What President Trump is doing upends at least 25 years of U.S. trade policy, right? So, U.S. trade policy, for the last 25 years, was really focused on a consumer-driven U.S. economy, or maybe shareholder-driven U.S. economy, as opposed to a worker-driven U.S. economy, and President Trump is trying to change that.
And he’s trying to change that in a weekend, and he’s moving the goalposts on when rates go into effect, what those rates will be. They’re 145 percent. They’re 10 percent. They change, fluctuate, in a short period of time. So, I think the greatest indirect effect of the tariffs are the creationof uncertainty, that folks don’t know what the world will look like two weeks from now, let alone two months or two years.

And that makes it very difficult in terms of investing in new facilities, where to make something, sourcing decisions, sales forecasts, etcetera. Most companies have developed business models based on the previous trade paradigm, which was one of ever-increasing globalization, and at least in the United States, we might be sort of tipping from economic nationalism into protectionism, and that is creating significant uncertainty.

Sam Gandhi:
Trade law experts were initially startled by President Trump’s sweeping tariffs. A president usually, in our experience, doesn’t have that kind of broad authority, but the administration is applying a novel understanding of a 1977 law, called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to justify the tariffs. So, Ted, just to be blunt, are President Trump’s tariffs legal?

Ted Murphy: So far, we’ve had two different federal/district court equivalents consider it. We had the U.S. Court of International Trade strike down the tariffs earlier this year. That case is currently on appeal, and then another challenge brought in U.S. District Court, here in the District of Columbia, also found the tariffs were not authorized.

So, so far, the two courts that have considered these reciprocal tariffs imposed under IEEPA have both found them to be unlawful. So, both cases are on appeal to their respective court of appeals for the federal circuit, and ultimately, this decision will likely end up getting reviewed by the Supreme Court.

Sam Gandhi: Andy, let me get to you. Is any of that going to matter if Congress just agrees to it? As of this recording, last night, the Senate passed 51-50 to claw back cuts in the budget that were previously appropriated by Congress, and even a number of Republican senators said that they were very, very upset and hesitant about effectively the White House appropriating the power of the purse, but a number of them agreed to it anyway. So, where is Congress in all this, and how enforceable are the President’s tariffs?

Andy Shoyer:
Starting with where the power lies, as is, I think, widely reported, in Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, Congress has the specific power to regulate commerce with foreign nations and the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, but from a very early stage, even in the Tariff Act of 1890, Congress started to delegate some of that authority to the President and to allow the President to make judgments whether to impose duty-free treatment if he found x, y, and z, and the Supreme Court, again, starting in the 1890s, blessed that, that this was not shifting legislative power.

So, it was justifiable for Congress to delegate some of the activity, even though Congress retained that legislative authority. What we’ve seen, Sam, is with the advancement and the conflating of national security and industrial security, the President has blown through that distinction between his foreign powers authority in the Constitution and the power to regulate and to legislate on tariffs, and I think that’s where we’re seeing the tensions in the cases that Ted mentioned.

But I think we’re unlikely to see anything change on this, certainly before the midterm election, and really, the question is more if we have two parties that are becoming increasingly populist, it’s going to be difficult for business interests, which, for decades, always counted on the ability to have somebody, usually in the Republican Party, hear them and legislate along their interests to have global supply chains, and therefore, lower tariffs. It’s going to be hard for them to find a willing ear to legislate and to push back on this.

And so, I think we’re going to see an inert Congress on these tariff issues, at least through the midterm elections. If Democrats achieve victories in either the House or the Senate, I still think it’s going to be hard for Democrats to push back strongly, given the dynamic that Ted described, that is that it will be hard for them to push back on a worker-driven policy, which is what populists on either side would argue we are trying to pursue.

Sam Gandhi: And there’s various litigation that’s out there, and I want both of you to comment on that. There’s litigation in the World Trade Organization courts, but there’s also a tremendous amount of U.S. litigation. Just a quick response from each of you before we go to a break, in terms of what’s the likelihood of any of that litigation being effective to either stop or reverse some of these tariffs?
Andy Shoyer: I’ll defer to Ted on the U.S. litigation he alluded to, the two principle IEEPA cases. You’re right. A number of our trading partners, including China, almost as a matter of good form, have brought cases in the World Trade Organization, challenging various aspects of the Trump tariff policy.
At present, that cannot lead to a victory at the appellate level because the United States’ policy has eliminated the ability to appeal, and the way the WTO system works, without a functioning appellate body, if the United States were to lose, it could appeal and essentially appeal into the void.

So, it would effectively eliminate that case. Now, our trading partners might still continue to bring cases, because they can still prevail at the lower court level, the panel stage, and they would at least establish decent jurisprudence and create some leverage, but the United States knows, well, and our trading partners know, well, that there’s no big victory that is threatened against them in the WTO.
Ted Murphy: On the domestic side, these cases have merit. So, in the case that was brought in the U.S. Court of International Trade, the three-judge panel of the CIT issued a decision finding that the imposition of these tariffs…I mean, you know, they noted lots of things. You know, for example, IEEPA never uses the word tariffs. So, as Andy said, we’re talking about a power to assess tariffs that is bestowed on Congress in the Constitution.

So, the idea is that if the President is acting to impose tariffs, then he or she must be doing so pursuant to delegated authority from Congress, right, a statute. So, when you look at the statute, and it says regulate imports, is that what Congress meant, an unbounded tariff war against every country in the world, or not?

And you know, I think that question that if, you know, and I think there’s some Supreme Court, even with the composition of this court, the idea being if Congress is going to give away a power or going to delegate a power to another branch of government, they need to do so explicitly. So, if they’ve got the power to assess tariffs, and they want to delegate that to the President, they would do so explicitly, and IEEPA is not a very explicit statute.

In other words, it uses terms like national emergency that aren’t defined, and it doesn’t actually say anywhere that tariffs can be imposed. So, the administration is taking a very broad statute and trying to, I guess, at least my view personally, is say that’s sort of an exception and trying to, you know, have the exception sort of swallow the rule, and it’ll be curious to see what the courts ultimately do with it.
I would mention that the…at least for the Court of International Trade case is moving through the federal court system incredibly rapidly. The U.S. Court of Appeals had scheduled oral argument in this case months earlier than it normally would have. The oral argument is scheduled for July 30. In addition, they had decided to hear the case en banc rather than in a normal three-judge panel.
The sort of conventional wisdom or expectation is that the federal circuit is trying to hear this case and issue a decision before the Supreme Court term starts in October. So, the point is they know these are significant, weighty issues, and they are trying to move the case along as quickly as possible, so it can get to the Supreme Court as quickly as possible. So, I think the litigation…I think the questions raised in the litigation, they have merit, and the cases are moving really pretty quickly.

Andy Shoyer: I just want to pick up on one thread because I know a lot of our clients are confused that they read about these IEEPA cases, and so, they think that the President’s tariff-making ability is under threat, that there’s some uncertainty. To be clear, the uncertainty is really limited to what he’s trying to accomplish under IEEPA. The other law that Ted alluded to, which is sector specific, is Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.

That is a completely separate law. Ironically, it is a law that expressly addresses national security related trade concerns. President Trump reinvigorated that law in his first administration with respect to steel and aluminum and other products, and he, through the Commerce Department, is going gangbusters with additional ones. The use of 232 was litigated already, and essentially, the administration prevailed.

So, our clients should not be under the impression that all of President Trump’s tariff-making ability is somehow under threat. It really is his preferred approach, which is IEEPA, because it gives him the greatest flexibility, but Section 232 is live, and we are seeing a lot of activity, including, for example, the threat of significant tariffs on lumber and 200 percent tariffs on pharmaceuticals.
So, in a number of sectors, this is a real threat, but again, we don’t want people to confuse the fact that the Supreme Court is going to hear a case in its next term about IEEPA, and that somehow puts all of what President Trump is trying to do under question. It is not the case.

Sam Gandhi: If you’re interested in more information on the energy industry, tune in to the next episode of Sidley’s Accelerating Energy podcast, hosted by our partner, Ken Irvin. You can subscribe to Sidley’s Accelerating Energy podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

You’re listening to The Sidley Podcast. We’re speaking with Andy Shoyer, a partner in the firm’s Global Arbitration, Trade, and Advocacy practice, and Ted Murphy, a co-leader of that practice and what we think of as the busiest person in this firm since the President was inaugurated.

And we’re talking to them about President Trump’s goals for his tariffs, the impact on the business community and our trading partners, and what litigation has taken shape in response. So, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that local companies that manufactured goods, such as kitchen and organizational products say the survival of their businesses is in jeopardy over the higher tariffs on Chinese imports, and one of the business owners said, quote, ”I hope we can hang on.”

So, Andy, from your perspective, how are people in the business community dealing with the uncertainty inspired by the tariffs? And we thought about that, earlier in the podcast, as an indirect effect. It seems like a fairly direct effect.
Andy Shoyer: Absolutely, Sam, and I think the answer is we see our clients in at least six of the seven stages of grief. I would skip denial because I think most of our clients are too smart for that. President Trump presaged a lot of this in his first administration, but as Ted said, he has changed his viewpoint in the way he’s using tariffs.

We are seeing a number of responses. Some of our very large clients with very significant global supply chain exposures have created tariff task forces, and those task forces really are across the entire breadth of the company, and they’re trying to get smart quickly, and they’re trying to come up with options that are being required by the CEO and by the board.

The difficult part of that is, of course, the uncertainty that Ted alluded to and the constantly shifting deadlines, so that for a company that would make multimillion dollar investments in, let’s say, moving out of China and putting significant investments in the United States, it’s very difficult for them to justify that if, in six months, a lot of the costs associated with exports from China or elsewhere are dissipating.

And then they’re dealing with much higher labor and regulatory cost in the United States. So, I think the response has been to think and to talk, which is exactly the right thing to do, internally, but I think a lot of our clients are holding back on making major decisions because they worry about having to justify that, later on.
Sam Gandhi: Ted, what’s your views on the effects of this and what businesses… how they’re pivoting?

Ted Murphy: I think what we’ve seen, and it didn’t start with President Trump’s second term. It sort of accelerated, obviously, with this second term, but it really started, you know, years before that, but it’s this transition from sort of a globalized world to a more regionalized world. So, again, we had that period of time, from the early 1990s through the mid-2010s, where every year it kept getting cheaper and easier to move goods, and people, and data, really, around the world.

And you may remember there was even concepts like just-in-time inventory, right, which is a fantastic concept that works great if there is no friction in the international trading system, but beginning in sort of mid-2010s, with the rise of economic nationalism, more friction gets put into the international trading system.
So, what we’re seeing is you might be a multinational, and you might’ve had, you know, four plants around the world, and what you would do is you would have each plant specialize; each plant specialize in a separate product line and then service the world from those respective plants, and today, you might have four plants around the world, but what you’re having to do is have each plant produce all four product lines and service the region.

So, again, there really is sort of a paradigm shift that’s sort of going on here in this transition from trade liberalization, globalization, to a more economic nationalistic type of paradigm, and again, in the U.S., it appears potentially tipping into protectionism. So, I think it’s easier for large companies who have that ability to say I’ve got four plants and I can re-tool, so, from producing one product line to producing four product lines and then servicing the region.

But it is a lot less economically efficient, right? So, we went from a time of, you know, again, with that specialization, leads to greater economic efficiency, and when barriers go up, it reduces the economic efficiency, and this is sort of the world in which our clients are coming to grips with today.

Sam Gandhi: Ted, when you talk to our clients about this, what’s your perspective in terms of are most of them waiting to see the effects of what’s happening towards the rest of this year, or are most of them actually taking some level of action?

Like, for instance, I mean, some of the things you’re talking about in terms of re-tooling, potentially moving manufacturing, those are efforts that take board action, many years, environmental feasibility studies, things like that. Anecdotally, how many people do you think are really actually taking a move on that, or are they still waiting to see?

Ted Murphy: I think a fair number of our clients are, in fact, moving. As I said, this isn’t a new paradigm, right? I think our view is that President Trump isn’t a cause, really, of any of this. He’s sort of more of a symptom of it. It’s the pendulum swinging back from globalization, right, that has sort of costs, and you can look at things like Brexit, you know, for example, as another example of the rise of economic nationalism. So, yeah.

So, I think, for a lot of our clients, we’ve been talking to clients about this, certainly since President Trump’s first term, and a lot of the trade policies continued through the Biden Administration. And I guess our view is that, at least our advice to our clients is, you do have to step back, and the first question you need to ask is do you think this is a temporary blip on the radar screen, or do you think this is part of a long-term trend?

And if you think it’s part of a long-term trend, then we need a new plan for the future. So, again, at least certainly in our practice, we’ve been talking to clients about this shift in the paradigm for several years now, and yeah, I think it’s accelerating under President Trump, because, as Andy said, when tariffs go into effect, they’re very hard to peel back, right?

So, regardless of what happens, and we do have two political parties, each of whom are running increasingly on populist agendas, so, from a trade perspective, it really is hard to see. What I say is, look, no one knows what the future is going to look like, but we’re pretty darn sure it’s not going to look like the past. So, yeah, you need a new plan for the future.

Sam Gandhi: So, Andy, with earnings reports coming out, a number of companies basically told the market that they think consumers are pretty much holding steady in response to the economy and still spending, but how are they responding to the tariff announcements, and what impact, in turn, does that have on business?

Andy Shoyer:
Consumers seem to be as uncertain as businesses. The only certainty, I guess, is that tomorrow, next week, next month might be worse, in that these higher costs are going to hit. So, I’ve seen some reports where consumer spending in the first half of the year ticked up, largely from affluent consumers, who might be making purchases in terms of housing-related costs that will be more expensive if there are tariffs on lumber.

You can’t pre-purchase pharmaceuticals, if those are going to be subject to 200 percent tariffs, but there are some things that you can anticipate. So, what I think we have been seeing is that the fear that tomorrow is going to be more expensive for these kinds of costs has driven consumers to continue to buy. The factor, Sam, is, of course, the Fed holding steady as long as it’s been. In terms of today’s recording date, we’ve seen news that inflation is starting to reflect these tariffs, but that’s pretty new, and perhaps it took a lot longer than folks expected.
So, without relief in terms of the Feds’ activity, I think consumers are likely to continue to make these purchases, perhaps for a couple of months, and then the predictions would be that consumer spending is going to be flat, and obviously, our clients are taking that into account.

Sam Gandhi: As we wrap up the podcast, I’m going to go to each of you and just ask you, what are you telling clients in terms of when they call you up and say what should we do? What’s the one thing you’re telling them? Ted?
Ted Murphy: That’s a good question, Sam, because, again, as I just said, really no one knows for sure what the future is going to look like, and we have trade announcements almost every day, and oftentimes, only on social media, with no additional detail. So, one of the things we tell clients is, look, again, you’ve got to step back, right? There is so much coming out of this administration when it comes to trade, right?

We’ve announced we’ve got a deal with Vietnam, but no details are available, you know, two weeks later, and in fact, Vietnam is sort of indicating it’s surprised by some of the terms that were included in President Trump’s social media post.
So, it’s an incredibly uncertain time, and I think, so, what we counsel clients is to sort of, again, step back and say where do we think this is going, and are the tariff actions, are they really just negotiation ploys that if he can get an agreement, they will go away, and if you believe that, you would act a certain way.

But if you believe that he also believes in tariffs for the sake of tariffs, then the individual daily ebbs and flows of tariff announcements become less important, and you are able to plan a little bit more, and this is what, again, Andy alluded to the stages of grief.

And yes, we walk clients through that all the time, but stepping back and saying, like, look, where is this going? What do we think the U.S. is going to look like, or our trade policy will look like in two years, in five years, and I think that helps people. You know, companies are economically rational actors. They can deal with anything if the incentives are clear. Right now, in this administration, the incentives, on a daily basis, sort of fluctuate and certainly aren’t clear.
The only way to get any clarity is to step back and say, looking at this from a big-picture standpoint, and say where do we think this is going, and then trying to act accordingly. I know that’s easier said than done, but that’s probably the best advice that we’re able to give companies, because, again, standing still ultimately becomes falling behind.

Sam Gandhi: Andy, what about you?

Andy Shoyer:
We’re really talking to clients about, as Ted said, stepping back and what can you control? You can’t control the chaos and the uncertainty, and that is so difficult. For most of our clients, if they knew that from today forward there was always gong to be an additional 10 percent tariff or a 15 percent, or whatever it is, they can accommodate that, right? They can make plans. It’s the uncertainty that’s so difficult.

So, it’s really kind of doing a risk assessment. Where are the things that you can control? Ironically, given the stated policy of this administration, I think a lot of our clients, where they can look to re-shore, to increase what they can do in the United States, they’re likely to do so relying on significant amounts of automation, and that is not going to create more workers, but that is something that they can control. They can accommodate that cost, but clearly, Sam, that depends on the industry.

Sam Gandhi: We’ve been speaking with Sidley partners, Andy Shoyer and Ted Murphy, about how they’re advising clients regarding President Trump’s tariffs and what’s in store for businesses moving forward. Ted, Andy, great look at the global and business landscape, and thanks for sharing your perspectives on the podcast today.

Andy Shoyer: Thanks a lot, Sam.

Ted Murphy: Thanks, Sam.

Sam Gandhi: You’ve been listening to The Sidley Podcast. I’m Sam Gandhi. Our Executive Producer is John Metaxas, and our Managing Editor is Karen Tucker. Listen to more episodes at Sidley.com/SidleyPodcast, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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