Trump’s China tariff plan would be ‘devastating,’ says CTA CEO Gary Shapiro
- TechRadar spoke with Gary Shapiro, CEO of the CTA
- “We don’t like tariffs” is the CTA’s message to the new government
- The proposed tariffs would be “devastating” for consumer goods, including technology
CES 2025, the massive consumer technology trade show in Las Vegas, is less than two months away. It falls into the liminal space between a historic US presidential election and a new administration’s very important plans for US commerce, which could impact many of the thousands of tech companies expected to list and the majority of US customers they serve.
The Consumer Technology Association (CTA), the nonprofit behind the event that often represents industry interests to the U.S. government, has a message for the new administration: “We don’t like tariffs.”
At a preview kick-off dinner for CES 2025 in Manhattan this week, CTA CEO, lobbyist and best-selling author Gary Shapiro held nothing back when I asked him about President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to impose an across-the-board tariff of 20% to be applied to everyone. imported goods and possibly a 60% special tariff on Chinese imports.
I will say until my deathbed that the tariffs are not paid by the countries involved, but by the consumers
–CTA CEO Gary Shapiro
‘I will say until my deathbed that tariffs are not paid by the countries involved, but by the consumers who pay for a tax, and that tariffs are a tax. It’s basic economics. The fact that President Trump has discovered that one economist who will say that out of thousands of economists means nothing to me.”
Shapiro added that the 20% tariff, which will likely include imports from Mexico and Canada, “will be highly inflationary and will not help the economy.”
Trump’s more draconian Chinese tariff measure, which appears designed to force companies to bring production back to the United States, could, as Shapiro and the CTA see it, be even worse: the proposed 60% tariff is potentially ‘devastating ‘ to call.
It’s getting worse
The impact of these tariffs could be twofold, because in addition to the pass-on costs that consumers will receive from the companies that are being tariffed, the countries that are being tariffed will, Shapiro told me, “hit us back, and our exports will be affected as well .and we have a huge amount of exports. This is not good for the country.”
However, Shapiro is not just pointing the finger at the new administration. He made it clear to me that some of the tariffs imposed by the last Trump administration remained in place during the Biden administration. He called them “two-tiered tariffs.” In his first term Trump imposed $80 billion in tariffs. Biden kept the majority of them in place.
Despite the bleak outlook, Shapiro told me that the CTA would welcome the new administration, adding that there have been “no impacts” among CES 2025 exhibitors and that some business leaders are optimistic about the change in the White House as the regulatory environment Biden so strict. Shapiro pointed to the scuttling of Amazon’s acquisition of iRobot. “In a sense, there is some optimism that we can finally achieve some of the things we should be achieving.”
However, that doesn’t change the CTA’s position on rates. “We will oppose them.” Shapiro said, adding, “Will we succeed? Don’t know.’
