Steve Madden, a $3 billion shoe company, announced Thursday that it would rapidly halve its Chinese production to avoid Trump’s tariffs. Those plans have been in place for a long time, in anticipation of a Trump victory, according to Steve Madden’s CEO Edward Rosenfeld. “We have been planning for a potential scenario in which we would have to move goods out of China more quickly,” Rosenfeld told Wall Street analysts Thursday.
The National Retail Federation last week in an analysis found that the price of a $50 pair of sneakers would rise to $59 to $64 under Trump’s tariffs. And Americans would pay as much as $24 billion more for apparel each year because of anticipated increased costs. Companies that make clothing rely on China’s inexpensive labor costs and incredibly efficient manufacturing capabilities to rapidly deploy workers to make new products for the US market as fashion senses change.