麦肯锡-关税与贸易：为不可预测的情况做好准备（英）

Geopolitics PracticeTariffs and trade: Preparing for the unpredictableThe global trade system is rife with uncertainty—but businesses can’t afford to remain frozen. Here’s how leaders can take action with tariff and trade policies in flux.July 2025As geopolitical tensions persist, global trade dynamics are becoming increasingly complex—and many leaders find themselves on tenterhooks. On this episode of The McKinsey Podcast, Cindy Levy and Shubham Singhal, two global coleaders of McKinsey’s geopolitics work, join Global Editorial Director Lucia Rahilly to discuss how to move forward amid rapidly reconfiguring trade relationships—regardless of the way current tariff talks play out.This conversation has been adapted from our McKinsey Live series.The McKinsey Podcast is cohosted by Lucia Rahilly and Roberta Fusaro.The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.What’s new on McKinsey.comRoberta Fusaro: Check out our recent report about how to win the right battles for consumer attention. Just to make things trickier, not only is it tough to earn people’s focus, but consumer behavior is a little confusing these days. Understanding what’s motivating consumers to spend is the focus of our recently published State of the Consumer report.Getting a handle on trade unpredictabilityLucia Rahilly: The tariff landscape remains dynamic and uncertain. Cindy, what do we need to know about where we are now and what’s likely to happen in coming weeks?Cindy Levy: It has been an eventful number of months, and we’re doing our best to keep on top of developments. The announcements in mid-April took us from a 2 percent weighted average tariff rate on goods into the US to one of 20 to 25 percent, before assuming any reversal of the reciprocal tariffs. If you look at all manufactured goods purchased in the US, about 37 percent are imported. This creates a big knock-on effect on US manufacturing purchases.There are developments since April that are important to understand. Some are in the industrial space, and some are still in the policy space. The first is that many global companies are seriously evaluating increasing their manufacturing in the US. Many are also saying, “I need to pause. I can’t make major capital decisions right now because the environment is too uncertain.”Another development is that China and the US agreed to a 90-day pause in April. This pause lowered the tariff rate on Chinese goods into the US to 40 percent, from 145 percent. Consequently, we saw the shipping patterns change quite quickly. Shipping rates on containers essentially tripled right after that pause was announced. We’ll see what happens in the aftermath of the pause.Additionally, the deadline for the moratorium on reciprocal tariffs is early July, and people are queuing up to try to make bilateral trade agreements, such as the UK trade agreement. It’s Tariffs and trade: Preparing for the unpredictable2important to watch what’s happening in those trade agreements with diff