CEO: China tariffs will cost Ford $1B
Ford CEO Jim Hackett told Bloomberg Television on Wednesday that his company faces $1 billion in lost profits from President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
“The metals tariffs took about $1 billion in profit from us – and the irony is we source most of that in the U.S. today anyways,” Hackett said. “If it goes on longer, there will be more damage.”
A Ford spokesman told the Detroit Free
Press that Hackett was referencing Ford internal forecasts of an increase of about $1 billion in steel and other metal costs in 2018 and 2019 due to tariffs.
Hackett described business as stalled by the uncertainty over Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum from China and Canada, which have led to a range of retaliatory tariffs.
At the end of August, Ford cited Trump’s tariffs on cars from China in canceling its plans to import to the United States the Focus Active SUV, meant to take the place of the Ford Focus as the auto giant shifts production to pickups and SUVs.
That led Trump to crow that Ford would build the car in the U.S. and a correction from Ford that it could not make money that way.
Hackett said: “What we’re urging our administration to do – where we’re in China and in Europe – we say, you need to come to agreement quickly.”
Uncertainty about the escalating trade dispute, with Trump levying new tariffs on Chinese goods this month, is bad for the business environment, Hackett said.
“Business, you hear them talk about, they count on certainty,” he said. “In this case, we’re kind of frozen. A lot of businesses aren’t sure, and that’s not good.”