Make goods in US to avoid tariffs? There are trade-offs

German firms face challenges including changing US trade policy, supply adequacy

- Melissa Eddy

BALINGEN, Germany - When President Donald Trump upended global trade in his first term by placing tariffs on goods from China, many companies decided to move production elsewhere to avoid the duties.

For one company in Germany, that decision has come back to haunt it.

In 2022, Bizerba, a maker of industrial scales and slicers with customers around the globe, including US sandwich chain Subway, broke ground on a factory in Serbia. The strategy was to produce more parts and machines for the US market there, to escape a 25 per cent tariff that Mr Trump had placed on goods made in China.

However, just as the plant became operational in 2025, he imposed a 35 per cent tariff on goods made in Serbia. Now Bizerba is contemplating whether it should move some production to the United States.

"We are now almost at the point where it makes sense to produce certain products directly in the US, instead of trying to find new workarounds," said Mr Andreas W. Kraut, who leads the fifth-generation family-owned company.

Bizerba already ships some parts of the industrial scales and slicers it makes to the US to be assembled locally for its customers there. Like many companies around the globe, it is faced with the choice of either paying the added import taxes or building production lines in the US and creating a supply chain to support them.

In its trade agreement with the European Union, the US has imposed a 15 per cent tariff on goods from Europe. Nearly three-quarters of some 3,500 companies polled in September by the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry said they are already feeling the negative effects of Mr Trump's trade policy.

Still, the US market remains too big for many to quit.