Global trade deals are top of mind as President Trump announced new tariffs that'll take effect today and next week.

The most stark increase, a hike from 25% to 35% going into effect on all goods coming into the U.S. from Canada that aren't already included in the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement.

And another 40 countries will see a new 15% tariff on goods coming into the U.S. That includes our trade partners in the European Union.

After a deal was reached earlier this week where the EU agreed to purchase $750 billion worth of U.S. energy and invest an additional $600 billion by 2028.

And a 10% tariff will go into effect on other countries that have already reached trade deals but that still have a trade surplus from the U.S. Now the news sent markets tumbling yesterday and the U.S. dollar dropped against other global currencies.

Trade uncertainty continued today as the latest U.S. jobs report was released showing a major slowdown.

Only 73,000 jobs were added for the month of July.

That's much lower than economists expected.

Shortly after the report came out, President Trump fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner saying without proof that the numbers were manipulated for political purposes.

Here in New Jersey, businesses are bracing for impact as most of these tariffs are set to take effect on August 7th.

In our spotlight on business report, we have Michelle Sekirka, President and CEO of the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, here to look at the impact on our state's economy.

Michelle, it's great to have you with us tonight.

Can you just help us make sense of the announcement that came from the President just yesterday about the tariffs that we can expect and what the impact will be here in New Jersey?

Well, the impact is going to be that the cost has to be assumed and absorbed somewhere.

So it's either going to be absorbed by the receiving party, and let's just start and focus on manufacturing because this is the biggest impact.

The goals of the tariffs are to drive more manufacturing back to the United States.

The challenge is this is all happening too fast.

So while the ultimate goals may be great for the idea of creating new opportunity and jobs back home, we need a bigger pathway to get there, a longer runway to get there.

We don't have enough workforce here, and we have critical manufacturing inputs that we don't make in America that we must source from elsewhere.

I'm just going to tell you that 56% of US imported goods support manufacturing.

You say we need a longer runway.

What would that, what should that look like in your mind?

Absolutely.

So in the meantime, what we need to do is we need to understand the situation.

So for those critical inputs, example again for manufacturing, that we cannot source from America today.

Take for example steel.

Can we use steel as an example?

Steel is a perfect example.

That's exactly where I was going because there are certain things in order for us to manufacture here that we do not have the critical parts of steel to get here in America.

And so what we need to do is for those companies who are going to continue to invest here in America and particularly here in New Jersey, right?

Think about manufacturing 120 years ago, Trenton makes the world takes, right?

That's steel, Roebling steel.

In order to do that in the meantime, we have to ensure that we have tariff free access to the inputs that these manufacturers need so they could use the money to invest in their growth here and invest in building the workforce here.

We don't have that today and we need the time to build it in order to be able to say made in America more than we say made in America today.

Are we seeing, Michelle, any move towards more businesses, more manufacturing coming here to the US since these conversations around the tariff started at the start of this Trump administration?

Well, I think the industry on the whole is at a freeze point right now, waiting for predictability and certainty about what's to come.

I mean, that makes sense.

You can't make investments if you don't know what those investments are going to cost you 30 days from now, six months from now, a year from now, five years from now, especially in manufacturing, very, very cost intensive industry.

We're not going to make big investments until we know what it's going to take for us to get ROI on those investments.

Are you concerned seeing the jobs report that came out today that clearly there's been a slowing down?

Are you seeing that here in New Jersey correlating with the national numbers?

Yes.

Absolutely, yes.

In fact, I mean, I think this past month I just saw that maybe our numbers were a little better on unemployment, less people on unemployment, but our unemployment rate has been higher than the national and we should be concerned about that.

We also have to recognize that the workforce shortages that we experience today are the result of not just lack of skills to get people into the right jobs, which we continue to try to develop each and every day in partnership with our educational institutions, the right skills for the right jobs.

But we are looking down a demographic loss in coming.

We're going to have a demographic cliff.

We're going to have about a decade where birth rates have been down and we need to ensure that we can fill the jobs that we have.

And I'm going to go back again to manufacturing because today, even if we could possibly bring more back here today, we don't have the workforce to support what we need to deliver the products we want to make here in America today.

All right.

Well, thank you, Erica.

We have to leave it there.

President and CEO of the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, as always, thanks for your perspective.

Thanks for the opportunity.

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