关税与贸易：为不可预测的情况做好准备（英）

As geopolitical tensions persist,global trade dynamics are becoming increasinglycomplex—and many leaders find themselves on tenterhooks. On this episode ofThe McKinseyPodcast, Cindy Levy and Shubham Singhal, two global coleaders of McKinsey’s geopolitics work,join Global Editorial Director Lucia Rahilly to discuss how to move forward amid rapidlyreconfiguring trade relationships—regardless of the way current tariff talks play out.This conversation has been adapted from ourMcKinsey Liveseries.The McKinsey Podcastis cohosted by Lucia Rahilly and Roberta Fusaro.The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.What’s new on McKinsey.comRoberta Fusaro:Check out our recent report about how to win the right battles for consumerattention. Just to make things trickier, not only is it tough to earn people’s focus, but consumerbehavior is a little confusing these days. Understanding what’s motivating consumers to spendis the focus of our recently publishedState of the Consumerreport.Getting a handle on trade unpredictabilityLucia Rahilly:The tariff landscape remains dynamic and uncertain. Cindy, what do we need toknow about where we are now and what’s likely to happen in coming weeks?Cindy Levy:It has been an eventful number of months, and we’re doing our best to keep on topof developments. The announcements in mid-April took us from a 2 percent weighted averagetariff rate on goods into the US to one of 20 to 25 percent, before assuming any reversal of thereciprocal tariffs. If you look at all manufactured goods purchased in the US, about 37 percentare imported. This creates a big knock-on effect on US manufacturing purchases.There are developments since April that are important to understand. Some are in the industrialspace, and some are still in the policy space. The first is that many global companies areseriously evaluating increasing their manufacturing in the US. Many are also saying, “I need topause. I can’t make major capital decisions right now because the environment is too uncertain.”Another development is that China and the US agreed to a 90-day pause in April. This pauselowered the tariff rate on Chinese goods into the US to 40 percent, from 145 percent.Consequently, we saw the shipping patterns change quite quickly. Shipping rates on containersessentially tripled right after that pause was announced. We’ll see what happens in theaftermath of the pause.Additionally, the deadline for the moratorium on reciprocal tariffs is early July, and people arequeuing up to try to make bilateral trade agreements, such as the UK trade agreement. It’sTariffs and trade: Preparing for the unpredictable important to watch what’s happening in those trade agreements with different categories ofgoods because not all goods are the same. We encourage people to keep an eye on thosecategories of goods that are deemed important to national security—steel, copper,pharmaceuticals—as you likely will seevery different treatments on those goods versus all othergoods.Scenario planningLucia Rahilly:Acknowledging uncertainties, how do you see the tariff situation evolving over,say, the next 12 months?Shubham Singhal:The impact of these tariffs is meaningful to not only business cost structuresbut also demand patterns. Importantly, it’s not just about your own cost structure if yourcompany moves. It’s the combination of where yours moves and where your competitors’ move,and what happens to the relative competitive advantage.It’s important to look at a few tariff scenarios. One scenario is closer to 8 percent. This is wherewe have national-security-sensitive tariffs and assume some de-escalation continues with theUS and China. Here the tariff level doesn’t go down to zero but is closer to 8 or 10 percent. Theother end is the 29 percent scenario, in which we escalate again after these pauses. In the 15percent scenario, some bilateral trade deals happen and some don’t. That’s a reasonable rangetoo. Within that are other factors playing into the economy aroundproductivity acceleration,AI,and the like.There’s a discussion around fiscal reset in the United States that might be needed given thedeficit, as well as central bank actions that might happen. Companies should look at thosescenarios, understand what happens to the demand for their products, their cost structures, andtheir relative competitive advantage, and then decide how to move forward. Over the next 12months, companies will begin to do that planning and have a sense of what actions to take asgovernment negotiations continue.Lucia Rahilly:Cindy, talk to us about how business leaders should be thinking about the overallmacroeconomic context, given these variables.Cindy Levy:You need to link your tariff scenarios to macro scenarios, given that the macroenvironment will be determined not only by tariffs: We also have a very big question aboutwhether and when the US will move faster to take $1 trillion of spending per year out of thebudget. Our economists see only $150 bil