SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
President Trump's announcement this week of sweeping tariffs rocked the global economy. Stock markets tumbled. China has already retaliated with tariffs of its own on U.S. products. Economists warn there will be higher prices and slower economic growth. President Trump said one of the main reasons for the tariffs is to help remake the domestic economy.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country, and you see it happening already. We will supercharge our domestic industrial base.
SIMON: But how realistic is that objective? Doug Adams is president of Adams Corp, a manufacturing company that specializes in medical technology. He joins us now from Tampa. Thanks very much for being with us, Mr. Adams.
DOUG ADAMS: Yes, sir. Thanks for having me.
SIMON: What's your reaction to these tariffs - effectively, taxes paid by the American people and businesses on goods from abroad?
ADAMS: My first initial reaction was they were a little bit stronger than everyone really thought they would potentially be. What we've seen thus far from some of our customers is just really the unknown in regards to the actual numbers that will be applied to their goods and services that they potentially could be bringing into the United States. And a lot of pause, you know, which traditionally leads to things that they might be doing already that they want to, you know, slow down.
SIMON: How could your business be affected?
ADAMS: In the short term, I don't necessarily think there will be any sort of effect. In the long term, you know, investment certainly could change. We help customers automate their medical device factories. They potentially could look at, you know, the scenario where they might hamper investment or put projects on hold that would - they otherwise went forward with.
SIMON: What about President Trump's goal of trying to bring back manufacturing jobs and operations back to the US?
ADAMS: I think it's a strong goal. In a perfect scenario, that would be great we could bring back manufacturing to levels that it once was. But it's going to take time. The single biggest challenge we have in the manufacturing side is that we just don't have enough people that are in the manufacturing world. You know, a lot of those jobs left in the '70s, '80s, early '90s. And we weren't training for them. You know, we weren't sending our kids to school to be able to talk about or do those things and be prepared for those jobs. And then the other side of it would be from an automation standpoint, we need those skill sets as well.
And then lastly, just your (ph) capacity. So even if we did bring back manufacturing here in the United States, it's going to take a while to ramp up our existing manufacturing facilities. A lot of them are already at capacity. So giving them the ability to turn on a dime is just really not something you can do. And I know a lot of big companies have already had discussions around bringing manufacturing back, but some of those projects could take anywhere from two to five years.
SIMON: Let me ask you about medical technology. How important is it to try and bring medical technology back - manufacturing back from overseas?
ADAMS: I think it's critical from a geopolitical standpoint having the ability to build it on your own, regardless of, you know, if it's made in a friendly or an unfriendly country, not being able to control our own destiny in regards to the items that our citizens would need I look at it as a very big risk. And the challenge is that, you know, some of the lower-end medical devices, like something simple as a Baid-Aid or a mask, they're very difficult to manufacture those low cost here in the United States without a significant investment in automation. And a lot of that automation has been invested abroad. We don't have the ability to make our own medical devices that could be needed in time of a pandemic or, you know, even a time of geopolitical conflict. Yeah, I think that's a big risk to our country.
SIMON: But it takes time to develop those kind of resources, doesn't it?
ADAMS: Yeah, to build a, let's say, for example, a ground-up factory, you're probably, you know, two to four years, depending on the entity that you're in and local permitting and state permitting and federal permitting and getting FDA approval on that med device to be made in that individual location. That can take, you know, probably upwards of sometimes, you know, half of a decade or more to be able to do that. So it's one thing to say that we want to do it, but then the actual getting it done, open, operating, fully staffed with the people that know how to do that because we just haven't done those things in our country in a long time.
SIMON: What about the prices your customers will pay and, ultimately, consumers?
ADAMS: They're probably going to go up in the short term. They're going to have to figure out ways to mitigate that through other processes. And sometimes, when your input costs go up, your process has to get more efficient and effective, and that's where the automation piece and trying to do more with less comes in.
SIMON: May I ask what do you think your business is going to be like over the next year?
ADAMS: I'm cautiously optimistic. You know, I think that there is an opportunity in every situation that you walk into, and we focus on what we can control. The one thing we're going to do is try to figure out every individual customer's needs that they're going to have, you know, with these 'cause different customers are going to have different needs based on, you know, where they procure things and how they go about building things. We're going to try to be that resource for them to be able to mitigate this as much as possible. I expect to grow this year.
SIMON: Doug Adams is president of Adams Corp. Thanks so much for being with us, sir.
ADAMS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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