00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes.
00:07Joining me now is David Bork, Executive Vice President at Overhaul.
00:10David, thank you so much for joining me.
00:12It's great to be back. Thank you for inviting me.
00:14Of course. And you and I first spoke the day after what President Trump dubbed as Liberation Day,
00:20where he unveiled his sweeping tariff policy.
00:23And when you and I had that conversation, you said you were in shock.
00:26The tariffs were way more broad ranging than anticipated.
00:30So now, as we sit here two months to the day from Liberation Day,
00:34I'm curious what your experience has been like on this tariff roller coaster, which we will get into.
00:39And more importantly, to start off the conversation, has that shock worn off?
00:45I think that the initial shock has definitely worn off.
00:49And I think it's been a very interesting eight weeks.
00:53When we last spoke, I did say, you know, you asked me what advice was I giving the companies at the time.
01:00And my advice was hurry up and wait and be prepared to act quickly.
01:06Now, I don't like to say that I'm always right.
01:11But in this instance, I actually was right.
01:14It was if you'd made a decision on any given day over the last eight weeks, there's a fair chance that you would have to have rolled back that decision nearly immediately.
01:26And so from a supply chain perspective, this ongoing turmoil is interesting.
01:33And it is challenging in terms of what is going to happen next.
01:38And right up until Friday, you know, we even thought it was starting to calm down a little bit.
01:43We thought there's negotiations happening with China.
01:46And then suddenly steel and aluminium come back on the agenda on a speech from the president on Friday evening and doubling the tariffs on those.
01:54And I watched our conversation back from early April and you were right on a bunch of things.
02:01So, A, give yourself a pat on the back.
02:02But B, your advice was hurry up and wait, but be prepared to act quickly.
02:06And I actually wrote that down because I'm curious if that's the advice you would give in light of the court rulings regarding the tariffs.
02:13Because last week, the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled against President Trump's tariffs.
02:17They called them unlawful.
02:19He exceeded his authority in doing that.
02:21And less than 24 hours later, an appeals court ruled that the tariffs can stay in effect for now.
02:27So, what's your advice to the business community?
02:30Hurry up and wait, but be prepared to act quickly.
02:33What does that look like?
02:35My advice has not changed because I think that this is still such a complex set of activities that have to happen.
02:44I do not doubt that the White House are working, you know, very, very quickly to try and sign agreements, trade agreements with a lot of countries around the world.
02:57But we haven't really seen a lot of progress.
02:59We hear a lot about the conversations, but we haven't seen real factual progress.
03:04That has to happen.
03:05The 90 days that the President initially talked about, we're getting close to the end of that 90 days.
03:13You know, listening to the commentary from Besant and from Lutnik, they're saying, okay, we're in these negotiations.
03:19But I read an article this morning which said that, to a certain extent, a lot of what happens next depends on what is agreed with China.
03:30And that's an interesting perspective because it means, you know, it's not just supply chains are saying, hurry up and wait.
03:38The global economy is, to a certain extent, saying, let's see what happens with China.
03:43And that may well set the precedent for what happens with everybody else.
03:48And that's perfectly fine, but we just need it to happen.
03:51We need it to actually, we need something to be on paper so that we can all now step forward.
