Trump’s 10% Tariff Could Result in Job Loses

A drop in revenue for exporters shipping to the U.S. means they need to cut costs. This could mean pausing expansion projects, reducing production, or even laying off staff. According to Jody Williams, Chief Sales and Marketing Director at Marie Sharp, mass layoffs are the last resort. He explained that if revenue goes down, costs have to be cut somewhere.

 

Jody Williams, Chief Sales and Marketing Director, Maries Sharp

“Let say our importers in the U.S. they are doing two to three containers a month, they will say no Jody we will do one or we will do one every two months. Let us wait and see if these tariff decision will be reversed. So they will not order with the same momentum and speed. And at the end of the day, this increase will go to consumer prices in the U.S. let us say a product is four forty-nine for a bottle of our product, it will go up to five ninety-nine, it all depends.  We always work with a more than thirty percent margin. So if you are working with a thirty, thirty-five percent and there is a ten percent tariff, then do the math, take that thirty and minus the ten. If our sales slow down then that means it is less products from Belize going into the U.S. due to these extra cost. Even if it does not slow down, the prices go up. So consumers will not buy as quickly as possible. Let us say we were buying this amount of peppers from farmers, these amount of carrots from farmers, we are brining in foreign exchange, all of that slows down and any expansion into growing our exports to the U.S. So if money is not coming into our business and we have bills to pay and it is too much then we have to cut cost somewhere or the other.”