As Utah businesses grapple with trade wars and uncertainty surrounding tariffs, two former secretaries of state — including Donald Trump’s former top diplomat — say the president needs a clearer vision and messaging about what he is trying to accomplish with his sweeping trade duties.
“President Trump hasn’t been clear about his overall strategic objective here,” Mike Pompeo told Utah business leaders during the “Crossroads of the World” forum sponsored by Zions Bank and World Trade Center Utah.
“He’s talked about using tariffs for fentanyl, trying to keep it out of the country. He’s talked about balancing trade. He’s talked about bilateral trade deficits,” Pompeo said Wednesday. The uncertainty and lack of a clear purpose for the tariffs are harming business, he further explained.
Pompeo’s sentiment was echoed by Antony Blinken, the secretary of state under former President Joe Biden.
“The first question we all have to ask and continue to ask is: What is the intent? What’s the purpose? What’s the goal?” Blinken said, speaking at the forum Thursday.
The tariffs have been pitched as a means to raise revenue, bring manufacturing back to the U.S., stop fentanyl, and erase trade deficits — none of which, Blinken said, add up.
High tariffs hinder trade; relocating manufacturing facilities takes years and a stable economy; and almost no fentanyl comes to the U.S. from places like Canada. And, Blinken said, the U.S. is bound to have trade deficits with some countries and surpluses with others, which isn’t necessarily bad and won’t be fixed by tariffs.
“These across-the-board tariffs, I think, are a recipe for a downward spiral,” he told Utah business leaders.
Trump has imposed a global 10% tariff on all imports to the U.S. and a 25% tariff on steel, aluminum, cars and some automobile parts. China, in particular, has been targeted by a 145% duty on all imports, and China has issued its own reciprocal tariff.
But the president exempted certain products, like cell phones, and paused the tariffs for 90 days while the administration tries to work on trade deals. Trump‘s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and trade representative are expected to have trade talks in Switzerland later this week — the first time the two nations have had face-to-face trade talks.
“We are feeling the pain”
On Thursday, Trump announced a tentative trade deal with Britain, which is Utah’s largest trading partner, according to a new report by the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah.
The institute reported that Utah sent $7.9 billion worth of goods to the U.K. last year, the vast majority of it in gold. Overall, Utah exported $18.2 billion in goods in 2024 and imported $21.9 billion. The exports supported 70,171 jobs.
Trump‘s tariffs, according to the report, will likely increase the cost of goods for Utahns and impact the state’s housing market, as the cost of imported lumber and other supplies rises, and a larger portion of residents’ household incomes goes to cover other expenses.
The roiling trade war, the lurching rollout of the tariffs and the uncertainty of where they will land in a few months have proven challenging for Utah companies, executives said Wednesday.
“Traeger is in the middle of the bullseye of everything bad in global trade,” said Jeremy Andrus, CEO of Traeger Grills, which gets about 75% of its grills from China and uses a lot of non-U.S. steel.
When tariffs were at 10%, Andrus said it was manageable. But once the rate reached 125%, it was a shock.
“We are feeling the pain,” Andrus said. “It’s really hard for us right now, but it’s an interesting moment.”
Lindsay Shumlas, CEO of Cotopaxi, said her company moved much of its production out of China during the COVID pandemic, but it now makes products in Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, India and the Philippines, plus some remnants in China.
“The most challenging part is the uncertainty, the uncertainty of what will happen after [July 8],” when the pause on tariffs is set to expire, she said. Right now, Cotopaxi is working on its 2027 line, Shumlas said. “How do we manage through future supply chains?”
The story was similar for Skullcandy, the Utah-based headphones maker, according to CEO Brian Garofalow. Skullcandy moved much of its production from China to Vietnam during the first Trump term, which could give the company an advantage over competitors, depending on where tariffs land.
Allocating resources on investments “to go play offense,” Garofalow said, has been challenging. “We don’t know if Vietnam is going to go back to 46%, or go down to zero or go to 146%. So we essentially have plans that are everything from accelerating growth to cutting to the bone.”
Darin Parker, president of PMI Foods, a global food distribution company with offices on six continents, said his company has been forced to adapt. For example, instead of exporting U.S. meat to China, it would provide its Chinese customers with meat from Australia that wouldn’t be subject to the steep tariffs.
“For the U.S. division, it’s horrific. It’s terrible, especially for China. The other markets, we’re still importing against 10% duties here and there. I mean, we can deal with that,” Parker said. “The elimination of the [Chinese] market entirely. That’s just not sustainable.”
For Wavetronix, which manufactures traffic radar systems, “our Chinese business has dried up,” said John Hortin, the company’s chief financial officer. So far, Hortin said, the harms have outweighed the benefits, “especially the way it has been administered. The uncertainty is the biggest problem we face.”
Kimberly Honeysett, chief legal officer for Varex Imaging, which makes medical devices, said the company has been trying to reevaluate its supply chain and diversify its suppliers, but that can be challenging from a regulatory standpoint.
“We work in a highly regulated medical industry, and so are not able to easily pivot,” she said, “because components have to get cleared and verified.”
Robert Spendlove, a senior economist at Zions Bank and former state lawmaker, said he has heard from more than one Utah CEO that “this will be the end of us. This is an existential threat that we can’t adjust to.”
But Pompeo and the Utah business executives said they believe normalcy will return.
Pompeo said that while Trump “may have gotten it wrong” by taking such an aggressive approach toward tariffs initially, he suspects the administration will refine its approach over time.
“I hope [they] will focus it on our adversaries — the Chinese Communist Party, the Iranians, the Russians — and befriend the Canadians and the important supply chain that runs through Mexico, our partners in Europe and Japan and Asia,” Pompeo said. “Those are folks who add enormous value and build wealth for America, and we should be very careful to anger them and we should make sure they’re not treating us poorly, too.”
Parker, with PMI Foods, said it’s simply not possible for the U.S. to separate its economy from China, but it may take some time for that realization to set in.
“I think we just need to calm down right now, see how this is going to go. Cooler heads will prevail,” he said. “I bet in a couple weeks we feel a lot different about things.”
