Jobs on Hold, Plans in Limbo: CEOs Voice Concern Over Tariffs

Manufacturers feel trepidation about the future, two CEOs told the BBC and The Boston Globe in separate interviews.

The view from Connecticut: Mark Shiring, president and CEO of ebm-papst Americas in Farmington, Connecticut, spoke to The Boston Globe (subscription) about the effects of President Trump’s tariffs on the fan and motor manufacturer, which expanded production in the U.S. in 2022.

“The tariffs have hit the company, the U.S. subsidiary of Germany’s ebm-papst, because certain components needed to make its large rooftop air conditioners and other products are only available from abroad, or from U.S. suppliers who use foreign parts,” according to The Globe.
Shiring said that the company has had to pass on the cost of the tariffs to customers, but any shifts in supply chains he might make are stymied by the uncertainty of the administration’s trade policy.
“‘You knew something was coming, but you didn’t know what it was, the timing and the scale,’ [Shiring] said of the tariffs Trump promised during last year’s campaign. ‘And I think all those things combined with almost no notice, you have no ability to react to that and you have no ability to plan your business.’”
Meanwhile, this uncertainty has undermined the company’s plan to expand—and put on hold the 50 to 100 jobs it would have created.

The view from Michigan: Chuck Dardas, president and COO of AlphaUSA, an auto manufacturer, told the BBC that the threat of tariffs to his company could be “existential.”

“We’re a couple hundred employees … and we can’t withstand this load of cost. We’ve got wonderful customers that we deal with, but they don’t have a bottomless pit of being able to help us either,” said Dardas.
“We don’t even know what the formulas are going to be to get any assistance if we can, whatsoever. But if we’re to bear the burden of these tariffs … we could go out of existence—and I’ve said that publicly a number of times.”
“Our wonderful company has been in business for 67 years,” he added. “It’s a shame to see a good, solid American company like ours be threatened as we are. We’ve done nothing wrong.”