
A person carries a Birkenstock branded shopping bag in Berlin, Germany, April 8, 2025. — Reuters
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London/Frankfurt: Sandals makers, including Berkin Stock and Jeweler Pandora, are considering spreading the cost of US taxes by increasing prices in markets to avoid a major increase in the United States, which can damage sales.
Global presence provides major retailers to minimize tariff costs in the United States. But it is putting central banks on the eyes as strategies can promote inflation in other markets like the European Union and the UK, where consumer prices have begun to stabilize.
The Berkan Stock Chief Financial Officer said last week that the price increase of “low -digit digits” globally would be enough to meet the effects of the US tariff. Pandora’s CEO Alexander Lakk said the Danish company is discussing whether it is to raise prices globally in its largest market or higher.
“Companies are really thinking about distributing tariffs,” said Marcus Goller, partner of Simon Kochar in Germany’s Bonn. “Outside the United States can say, Well, I can’t raise my prices so much in the US market, so I will increase the US a bit, and increase Europe and other markets a little.”
US President Donald Trump has imposed a 10 % blanket tariff on all global imports and is threatening to raise the so -called “mutual” taxes on his business partners. When we said Behmot Walmart said he would have to raise prices in response to revenue, Trump ordered the world’s largest retailer through social media to ‘tariff’.
Announcement of prices in non -US markets can be a way to avoid similar reactions by Trump for retailers. “Obviously, if your products are subject to the products coming to the United States, Math says you have to increase your prices in the United States,” said Jean Pierre Dubb, a professor of marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
“But you don’t want to accuse the White House of raising prices due to US prices, so if you can show that your prices are rising everywhere at this time … it’s like a shield.”
Jason Miller, a professor of supply chain management at Michigan State University, said that retailers can raise prices in some products or some markets where consumers are sensitive to low cost, and use it to provide subsidies to other products or countries where prices will further damage sales.
“Just a US firm (US) prices have to increase by 12 percent. But you, as a global firm, increase prices by 8.0 percent because you can play with prices in other markets,” he said.
If many multinational retailers spread pain in tariffs, more inflation can spread to countries that, like the UK, have already affected trade agreements with the United States to reduce the economic outcome of taxes. Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey earlier this month raised the issue of global companies that do not make a difference. [on tariff rates] And just say, we are going to impose a solution to the price, which runs all over the world, regardless of these differences.
“I think we have to look at it carefully,” he said.
Uncertainty of inflation
In the euro zone, inflation was eventually leading to a 2.0 percent target of the European Central Bank. In a survey by the European Central Bank (ECB) at the end of March, European companies said the hike in prices in the retail sector has been eliminated.
But it was earlier that Trump had unveiled his price policy on April 2, and later the revenue on Chinese goods was increased to 145 %. However, US revenue on China – 30 % last week – has allowed some European retailers to make the source of more cheap goods than ever before.
Martino Grink, CEO of fashion fashion fashion in 17 European countries, said suppliers in China have offered low price as US retailers canceled orders from factories there, and shipping costs also fell. “We do not know if inflation is taking place in the United States and if inflation comes to Europe,” Pasina said.
Some major retailers have refused to increase prices outside the United States in any case. “The debate that is taking place at our prices is only for the United States.”
ECB’s Executive Board member Isabel Shannabel has said that the euro zone inflation rate can initially be below the central bank’s 2.0 percent target, but that inflation can prove to be further below the road.
“To compensate for the input cost, the firms also increase the prices of goods that are not directly affected by the revenue,” Shinbil said in a speech earlier this month. Although each company has its own pricing strategy, economists have warned that some rising costs can take advantage of some taxes to increase prices, which increases their profits, like an increase in inflation by 2021-2022 during pandemic diseases.
“It will be very difficult for a firm’s consumers to know which part of the total cost of the product is subject to revenue, or even tariff rates apply. There is a firm environment to exploit the contradiction of this information. The way he did during Kovade,” said a professor at Utah University.
US consumers’ 12 -month inflation expectations increased to 6.7 percent in April, the highest study since 1981. And even in the euro zone, consumers are expecting inflation.