The Timing Couldn't Be Worse' Ports and Shipping Adapt to Trading Disarray

The container ship was halfway across the Atlantic when Donald Trump, during his first term in office, levied tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to the US from most countries.

- Joanna Partridge

The container ship was halfway across the Atlantic when Donald Trump, during his first term in office, levied tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to the US from most countries. At the stroke of a pen on a US presidential executive order, about £100,000 was added to the cost of one of the shipments on board, from the UK advanced materials manufacturer Goodfellow, destined for a US customer.

This time, the Cambridge-based company - which supplies scientific materials including metals, alloys and polymers for research - and its customers remembered the experience. Several clients got in touch trying to get ahead of Trump's threatened second-term tariffs.

"We had conversations with people about whether [orders] could be sped up to pull them forward, which is not necessarily an option because of lead times and manufacturing times," said Andrew Watson, the chief financial officer at Goodfellow.

Similar conversations will undoubtedly have taken place at companies around the globe in recent weeks, as suppliers scrambled to move goods to the US before Trump's much-trailed "liberation day" announcement, trying to dodge higher costs and protect their margins.

The dust is settling on a week of market turmoil, and despite the White House decision to pause additional tariffs for countries other than China for 90 days, the established global trading order has been thrown into disarray.

Supply chain specialists are concerned that complex international trade networks built over decades risk being ripped up, as companies try to work out if they can source products from different countries.