Latest news with #importers
Forbes
16 hours ago
- Business
- Forbes
Fourth Of July Fireworks: Will Tariffs Light The Fuse On Costs?
Bright burning sparklers against American flag, closeup Picture this: It's July 4th. The grill is sizzling, the lemonade is cold, and the sky is about to burst into a kaleidoscope of colors. But behind every 'ooh' and 'aah' is a supply chain story more dramatic than a grand finale. Let's light the fuse on what tariffs mean for your Independence Day fireworks Nearly 99% of the fireworks lighting up American skies are made in China. That's right—when John Adams called for 'illuminations' to celebrate independence, he probably didn't picture a world where the rockets' red glare came with a customs declaration and a hefty tariff bill. But here we are, with tariffs on Chinese fireworks between 35-150% , depending on when they were bought. Tariffs: Lighting the Fuse on Costs Tariffs don't just add a little extra to the bill—they're an exploding shell in the cost structure. For every container of fireworks arriving at a U.S. port, importers must pay the tariff upfront, before customs even thinks about releasing the goods. That means: Let's break down the ripple effects: With the 250th anniversary of American independence on the horizon, the stakes are higher than ever. If tariffs remain, the future of firework displays in America could be at risk. Exemptions have come and gone in the past, but there's no guarantee they'll return. A Call for Collaboration (and a Little Supply Chain Magic) What's the solution? As with any great supply chain challenge, it's about collaboration. Distributors, retailers, and even consumers need to work together to bridge the gap—maybe by absorbing some costs, maybe by adjusting expectations, but always by keeping the spirit of July 4th alive. So, as you watch the sky light up this July 4th, remember: every burst of color is the result of a global supply chain, a dash of resilience, and a lot of teamwork. Tariffs may have made the journey a little bumpier, but with the right planning and a bit of that American ingenuity, the show will go on—perhaps with a few more 'wows' for the supply chain professionals working behind the scenes. Happy Independence Day—and may your fireworks be as bright as your supply chain is resilient!
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Chile targets fast fashion waste with landmark desert cleanup plan
In a dusty corner of the Atacama Desert, the driest non-polar region on Earth, mounds of used clothes are scattered across the sand, where they sit, bleached and tattered, under the sun. As the sea mist drifts over a high coastal plateau above the city of Iquique in Chile's far north, the breeze rustles plastic bags bursting with second-hand clothing. Piles of garments stretch into the distance: consignments of nursing uniforms, shipments of shoes, bundles of work overalls and last season's fast fashion discards, high street tags still attached. But Chile's government has taken a decisive step towards addressing the environmental crisis which has beset the Atacama Desert. This week, the country's environment ministry announced that it had added textiles as a 'priority' category to its extended producer responsibility law, paving the way for importers to be made responsible for the waste produced by the thousands of tonnes of used clothing brought into Chile each year. Importers are now obliged to report the clothing they bring into the country, and further regulations will be added to the bill shortly. Chile's government will also publish a public policy specifically targeting textiles and their place in the circular economy. One of its goals will be to eradicate textile dumps in the Atacama Desert. According to government data, more than 90% of textiles sold in Chile are imported, making the South American country the world's fourth-largest importer of second hand clothing. The government calculates that Chile imports 123,000 tonnes of used clothing every year, with the effects felt most acutely in the north of the country – where the situation in the Atacama Desert has won global attention. 'This would spur a new consumer culture, as companies would be required to offer repair, reuse, and recycling services,' said Beatriz O'Brien, the national coordinator for NGO Fashion Revolution. 'It is a step toward a transition from a linear economy of production, consumption, and disposal to a circular economy for textiles and clothing in the country.' Global textile production is projected to grow from the 109m tonnes manufactured in 2020 to 145m tonnes in 2030. In Chile, people use an average of 32kg of textiles, contributing to 572,000 tonnes of textile waste per year in the country. Every day, tonnes of clothing arrive duty-free at the freeport in Iquique as giant plastic-wrapped bales, where they are sliced open and sorted into categories by a migrant workforce. The best clothes, often in near-pristine condition, are sold in outlet stores built into the narrow rows of warehouses at the freeport, or sent to Chile's capital, Santiago, for resale. Some are even bailed up and sent back to the US to be resold. The rest winds its way in a convoy of small trucks up to Alto Hospicio, a poor city sprawling across the plateau above Iquique, where the clothes are incorporated into a seemingly endless cycle of resale and reuse. At La Quebradilla, one of the country's largest open-air markets, vendors sell clothes for small amounts of cash, while the least desirable items are often slung out in the Atacama Desert. Some are then burned, with thick plumes of black smoke spiralling skyward from a messy dump on a high plateau outside Alto Hospicio. But after several years of research, Chile's government has managed to add textiles to its extended responsibility law. Many countries have similar legislation, but Chile's, in force since 2017, had only made producers responsible for recycling goods in several categories, including, tires, batteries, oils and plastic packaging. 'The inclusion of textiles in the [producer responsibility law] will establish the obligations of producers, who will no longer be able to disregard the environmental impacts of unused textiles,' said Chile's environment minister Maisa Rojas. 'The successful application of the law will allow us to address the lack of regulation for the industry, which has generated huge quantities of waste and affects the quality of life for people and the environment.' The best public interest journalism relies on first-hand accounts from people in the know. If you have something to share on this subject you can contact us confidentially using the following methods. Secure Messaging in the Guardian app The Guardian app has a tool to send tips about stories. Messages are end to end encrypted and concealed within the routine activity that every Guardian mobile app performs. This prevents an observer from knowing that you are communicating with us at all, let alone what is being said. If you don't already have the Guardian app, download it (iOS/Android) and go to the menu. Select 'Secure Messaging'. SecureDrop, instant messengers, email, telephone and post See our guide at for alternative methods and the pros and cons of each.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Altoona warehouse offers Iowa importers temporary respite from tariff volatility
The closest seaport may be 1,000 miles away in Galveston, Texas, but Jamie Cord likes to use a nautical reference in explaining a unique feature of one of his warehouses in Altoona. 'It's like the cargo is still on the ship and hasn't officially reached the shore yet so tariffs aren't owed until the goods leave (the warehouse),' said Cord, president and CEO of JT Logistics, which is offering so-called bonded warehousing that allows importers to hold items duty free until they're ready to go to market. It's believed to be the first of its kind in the Des Moines metro. But as President Donald Trump employs steep tariffs to address trade issues, it may not be the last. Bonded warehouses, overseen by the U.S. Port Authority, are still relatively rare in the United States but are gaining popularity. Companies importing goods into the United States, especially from China, are rushing to convert warehouses into bonded facilities. The U.S. has about 1,700 of the warehouses, where imported goods can be held without immediate payment of customs duties such as tariffs, currently set at 30% for items from China. The fees are only paid when the goods leave the bonded warehouse, allowing businesses to manage funds more effectively at a time of extreme trade policy volatility. JT Logistics, with more than 2 million square feet of warehouse space in seven buildings at the interchange of Interstate 35 and U.S. 65, has 200,000 square feet of bonded warehousing space. The warehouse is called bonded because the company just post a bond with the government to ensure it is complying with trade requirements. In turn, it protects the warehouse with fences and security cameras. To prevent any unauthorized removal of inventory, only workers who have undergone background checks are allowed access. 'It's 100 percent secure,' Cord said. 'I'm an owner of the building and I can't go in there.' The Port Authority would not confirm how many bonded warehouses there are in Iowa, but Jason Ickert, chief operating officer for JT Logistics, said the company has the only such facility in the Des Moines area. Cord said his company started offering bonded warehousing space several years ago, before the Trump tariffs. The recent trade measures have spurred interest. Another option for managing tariffs are Foreign Trade Zones, where some manufacturing can take place using imported goods. 'And the reason why you might do that would be to actually do something called an inverted tariff, where maybe you bring in three components from another country, but by putting those three components together, the tariff rate on that new finished product is actually less than the individual tariff charge on the three components themselves,' said Peter Ralston, director of the Supply Chain Forum at Iowa State University. Free trade zones also sometimes are used in manufacturing of goods that use foreign components and then are exported, accruing the jobs and other benefits associated with production but avoiding tariffs and other cost barriers. Iowa has foreign trade zones in Des Moines, the Quad Cities, northwest Iowa and Cedar Rapids, and each can be expanded geographically to form subzones around specific facilities. For example, Des Moines' trade zone, managed by the Greater Des Moines Partnership, includes a company in Council Bluffs and Winnebago Industries in Forest City, said Ryan Carroll, director of regional business development for the Partnership. 'We can do something to basically allow us to expand the FTZ around a company's physical property in several counties that are outlined for that. And then we have kind of the general purpose area, which is a warehouse in Clive that has a little bit of FTZ space,' Carroll said. Qualifying for the designations involves some expenditures, such as the costs of establishing the facility to meet federal requirements, said Carroll and Ralston. 'There are some fees obviously to establish a foreign trade zone sub zone," Carroll said. "There are application fees, there's legal fees, those types of things associated with that on top of having to look at the other items as well.' One expense, he said, is for setting up a system to track all of the imported goods coming into a facility to meet reporting requirements. More: Ingersoll Avenue chocolate palace feeling weight of tariffs on its imported Easter treats 'Sometimes those things can be kind of front-end barriers to doing this because there's a little bit of time and cost involved with it, but ultimately, long term, strategically, if you're importing stuff and unless we have free trade agreements with everybody, it makes a lot of sense to look at,' he said. Ralston said bonded warehouse space can cost up to two times the price of a regular warehouse and recent demand due to tariffs has pushed those prices up in some place to fourfold those for a typical warehouse. But he said both bonded warehouses and FTZs offer some distinct advantages to companies that rely on imports. More: East Village outdoor outfitter hedges against tariffs by adding used goods to inventory 'To me, the massive advantage of being in a bonded warehouse or a foreign trade zone is it creates slightly more cash flow and maybe a little bit more cost certainty,' he said. 'It gives companies a chance to inventory without having to pay the tariff for what's still in the warehouse. That provides a little bit more cost certainty. I'm not saying cost benefit, but rather cost certainty, and it just helps to be a little more certain of your cash position." Having the product in-hand but not having to immediately pay the tariff also gives companies an opportunity to manage market volatility, as with Trump's on-again, off-again tariff policies, he said. He pointed to steel tariffs, which recently went down for a while before again going up. 'So if you had steel in a bonded warehouse or FTZ you could have (waited) and paid a lower tariff rate,' Ralston said. More: Tariffs cost Iowa businesses $90M in April, new report says, a 304% hike from 2024 For companies managing supply chains, the uncertainty in the marketplace can be more unsettling than the actual tariffs, Ralston said. 'When I talk to Iowa businesses, it's not necessarily the tariffs that bother them, it's the uncertainty behind supply-chain decisions," he said. "Supply chains crave certainty and what we have right now is a period of uncertainty in a weird way.' Ralston said that if tariff were set without frequently being changed, companies would be in a better position to manage their effects. 'If it was just announced that this is what the tariff rate will be and a this is what it's going to be moving forward and we're not going to change it, manufacturing supply chains could figure out the best way to deal with it," he said. "But right now there's so much uncertainty and so much volatility that supply chains are having a really hard time operating. It's the uncertainty behind just so many different decisions right now that's causing a lot of harm in supply chains.' Iowa's economy can be particularly impacted by tariff policy, he said. More: Chicago Fed chief: Iowa, with its manufacturing and ag jobs, highly affected by tariffs 'Iowa is a production state, not a consumption state, so typically we're going to produce more than we consume,' he said, adding that the state 'gets hit on both sides' of tariff policy by having to pay tariffs for raw materials and parts needed for manufacturing but also getting hurt in the export of agricultural products. A recent report by noted that from April 2024 to April 2025, tariffs paid by Iowa importers went up by 304%, the 11th largest increase among all the states. Reuters contributed to this article. Kevin Baskins covers jobs and the economy for the Des Moines Register. Reach him at kbaskins@ This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: JT Logistics' bonded warehouse in Altoona keeps tariffs at bay
Yahoo
17-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Supreme Court gets petitioned to review tariffs: What to know
US businesses are pushing back against President Trump's tariffs with new urgency. Yahoo Finance Senior Legal Reporter Alexis Keenan joins Market Domination to explain how two importers are petitioning the Supreme Court to intervene before lower courts issue rulings, calling the tariffs an 'imminent threat.' To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here.
Wall Street Journal
17-06-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
The Surge in Ocean Shipping Rates Is Peaking
American importers are getting a rare piece of good news amid worries about tariffs and consumer spending as ocean shipping costs start to sink. The average spot rate to ship a 40-foot container from Asia to the U.S. West Coast slipped at the start of this week to $5,840, down from an average of about $6,000 the prior week, according to online booking platform Freightos. A measure of global ocean shipping rates, the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index, on Friday fell 6.8% from a week earlier, dragged down by an almost 27% decline in rates from Shanghai to the U.S. West Coast, according to HSBC Global Research.
