The Export Tariff Shock: What Now?
Imagine you wake up and learn that 25% tariffs have been imposed on your key exports with immediate effect. Your products have become unaffordable overnight in your target market, your competitiveness has collapsed, and local suppliers in the export country suddenly have a huge advantage.
How do you and your team proceed successfully?
After the initial panic, you call a crisis meeting with your leadership team to clarify: What does “success” actually mean for you in this crisis? Is it just about survival? Maintaining market share? Securing jobs?
Your company has always been proud of succeeding in international markets with high-quality products – that’s your identity. “Success” means preserving this export strength while finding new paths forward. You want to emerge stronger from the crisis, not just survive.
This is your striving for success.
You now sit down with all important stakeholder groups.
Your customers in the target market can no longer afford your products and threaten to switch to local suppliers. Employees are afraid of layoffs. Your sales partner in the affected country is facing collapse. The union and the community demand job guarantees that you cannot give. Management and owners still want positive results.
You address the conflicts openly and start the conversation: “We’re facing tough times together. Not everyone will get what they want, but we’ll find a way forward that works for everyone.“
This is thriving through relationships.
You and your team develop two scenarios: The main plan assumes that export tariffs will fall through trade negotiations within 12 months. Plan B assumes that the tariffs will remain permanently.
Both plans consider all stakeholder groups: You offer customers pricing relief instead of drastic losses, you gradually diversify to new markets (not all at once), you reduce staff through voluntary departures where possible. The difference: Plan A moves slower, Plan B moves faster and goes further.
This is your balanced planning – both approaches consider everyone fairly, just at different speeds. Even though it’s going to be tough for everyone.
Now you implement: You start with Plan A and watch the political developments closely. Your sales team is already scouting new markets as backup, your production team is planning capacity changes for both scenarios. Your sales team has careful conversations with customers about potential price changes.
This is your practical implementation – flexible depending on the scenario.
Six months later, you measure stakeholder satisfaction: Are customers happy with the pricing solutions? Do employees feel you’ve treated them fairly? How’s the new market development through partner going? Are your business numbers sustainable for management?
The reality shows: Trade negotiations have failed – the export tariffs are here to stay. Your satisfaction measurement gives you clear signals: Plan A bought you time, but it’s not enough anymore. You need to switch to Plan B and accelerate your market diversification big time.
This is how you ensure sustainable success even in an export crisis. And if the next trade crisis comes, you follow the same 5 steps, but at a higher level.
But imagine something goes wrong – you can not break into new markets, or the margin cuts are eating into your foundation. What would you naturally do?
You would logically go backwards:
- Was the development of new markets too slow? (Step 4)
- If not, were your Plans A and B perhaps unrealistic? (Step 3)
- Or did you misjudge how customers would react to export tariffs? (Step 2)
- And if you understood the reactions correctly – were you clear enough about your identity as a quality exporter in the tariff crisis? (Step 1)
You would identify the cause – the thorough satisfaction measurement of all stakeholder groups in Step 5 would give you clear indicators. Then you would fix the problems and continue with the next step.
