‘No such thing as business as usual anymore’: Trump tariffs cause 2nd day of uncertainty

Arizona’s business community breathed a sigh of relief after President Donald Trump announced that his proposed taxes on imports from Mexico and Canada would be delayed by one month.

The announcement Monday meant that the most acute economic impacts for Arizona consumers and companies will be averted, at least temporarily.

It’s still too early to gauge how the president’s negotiating on trade this week may affect business’ long-term planning. But the back-and-forth is itself a telling new signal of what companies should expect under Trump’s leadership, said Danny Seiden, president of Arizona’s Chamber of Commerce.

“I think the bottom line is that President Trump’s foreign policy style and doctrine is vastly different than the prior administration,” Seiden told The Arizona Republic Monday. “If he says he’s going to do something, he’s willing to do it, to force negotiations, to force other countries to come to the table.”

For the private sector, that means getting accustomed to Trump’s brash approach to the nation’s highest office.

“There’s no such thing as business as usual anymore, in the new administration,” Seiden said.

Will companies ‘recalculate’ cost of doing business in Arizona?

The promise of open trade with Mexico — enshrined in America’s trade agreements with its southern neighbor — has been one of Arizona’s selling points when enticing companies to do business in the Grand Canyon State. It has attracted manufacturers, particularly in the auto and aerospace sectors, who frequently ship parts back and forth across the border multiple times when assembling products.

Seiden worries that could change if the trade relationship between Arizona and Mexico grows more unpredictable.

“To have that all of a sudden being questioned, that it was gonna cost more … it’s gonna cause businesses to recalculate what the cost of doing business is, in America and on border states,” Seiden said.

It could also affect Arizona’s burgeoning tech sector, said Steven Zylstra, president of the Arizona Technology Council. Many of the state’s biggest employers have operations in Mexico, and would feel the pinch from tariffs, he said.

“We’re building an automotive industry, with Lucid (Motors) and Nikola,” Zylstra said, referring to two electric vehicle companies. “One of the reasons they moved here is because of the proximity of the supply chains in Mexico for the automotive industry.”

That said, Seiden said he believes Republican control over the federal government will be, on balance, favorable to business. And he praised Trump’s stiff approach to border security as “noble.”

“Overall, we think we’re gonna see a lot of pro-business policies coming out of D.C.”

Uncertainty causes some businesses to tighten purse strings

The idea that Trump would take concrete steps to impose tariffs on Mexico and Canada surprised many in the business community, who had dismissed some of the president’s tariff threats as saber-rattling. The idea of taxing Canada in particular left many scratching their heads considering that country plays a minimal role in the flow of fentanyl, Trump’s stated priority in the negotiations.

“If you’d have asked me two weeks ago, I would tell you that I bet this is a negotiating tactic,” Seiden said. “That level of uncertainty tells you it’s gonna be very difficult to predict what happens next.”

Trump wound up pushing back the tariffs on Mexico and Canada after negotiating with those countries’ leaders. But the threat of future tariffs – including a 10% tax on imports from China, which was scheduled to go into effect at midnight Tuesday – is still causing some Arizona companies to tighten their purse strings.

Jaime Chamberlain, a produce importer based in Nogales, said there are still difficult decisions in his lap even though the tariffs have been temporarily delayed. For example he’ll need to decide whether to purchase a more expensive insurance bond, which he will need if Trump goes through with the tariffs in the end.

On the one hand Chamberlain doesn’t want to make a hefty expense that turns out to be unnecessary. On the other hand he doesn’t want to be caught unprepared, should Trump follow through on the tariffs after all. For now he is exploring his options so that he’s ready to “pull the trigger” if and when the tariffs go into place.

“I think you have to budget, and you have to act, as if tariffs are going into place,” Chamberlain said. “The worst thing to do is to not be prepared.”

He’s been trying to make himself more available in the media and to elected officials to “educate” people about the impact that tariffs would have on the U.S. economy and companies like his.

China tariffs loom, but seen as predictable

Though it’s not as acute as a tax on Mexico and Canada, Trump’s 10% tariff on imports from China stand to affect Arizona as well.

The U.S.-China Business Council, a group that promotes trade between the two countries, estimates that Arizona’s exports to China supported more than 12,000 American jobs in 2021.

In total Arizona sent about $1.5 billion worth of products to China in 2022, much of it in the form of semiconductors, aerospace products and parts, crops, and navigational and measurement instruments.

Those tariffs are a big deal for some Arizona companies, especially its tech and manufacturing sectors which are deeply interconnected with Chinese markets.

Still they’re widely seen as more predictable and manageable than Trump’s now-delayed tariffs on Mexico and Canada. If anything, they continue a pattern seen in prior administrations: Trump escalated tariffs on China during his first term, many of which President Joe Biden continued or raised. That means they came as less of a surprise to the business community, Seiden said.

Zylstra said that Technology Councils of North America, a nationwide industry group, was drafting a letter to the Trump administration over the trade reforms, but they decided not to send it after the

Democrats skeptical of Trump wins; GOP sticks with the president

Since Trump announced the latest trade reforms last week, Arizona’s Democrats criticized the plans and questioned, in the end, whether Trump had actually achieved the victories he was claiming.

Rep. Yassamin Ansari, a newly elected progressive Democrat, took to CNN Sunday to blast the plans as “outrageous” and “misguided,” saying they would raise costs for already expensive necessities such as housing.

Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat, pointed out that Canada and Mexico already had announced several of the plans that Trump portrayed as a concession to avert the tariffs. Kelly wrote on social media that Trump was “dangling the Arizona economy off a cliff just so he can take credit for something Canada was already doing and Mexico has done in the past.”

Arizona’s GOP Congress members generally were supportive of the tariffs and said they showed Trump was serious about curbing the flow of fentanyl into the U.S.

Rep. Andy Biggs, a Trump ally in Congress who has announced he will run for Arizona governor in 2026, wrote he was “grateful” for Mexico’s commitment to send 10,000 troops to the U.S.-Mexico border after a conversation with Trump.

“Arizona consistently leads the nation in ‘gotaway’ traffic,” Biggs wrote. “Tackling the drug and human smuggling requires commitment from both nations.”

Rep. Juan Ciscomani, a Republican whose border district thrives on free trade with Mexico, was more measured in his praise for Trump.

“While tariffs may not be anyone’s first choice, we have a duty to prioritize public safety and President Trump is using every tool at his disposal to do so. And it’s working,” Ciscomani wrote Monday, hours after Trump suspended the tariffs on Mexico and Canada.