Poland could lose over $2 billion due to US tariffs, PM says
"The losses will be significant on both sides of the Atlantic, but a tough trade agreement is better than a senseless tariff war between allies," he wrote on social media platform X.
The U.S. struck a framework trade agreement with the European Union on Sunday, imposing a 15% import tariff on most EU goods - around half the threatened rate - and averting a bigger trade war between the two allies that account for almost a third of global trade.
Poland does not export many products directly to the United States, but expects to suffer knock-on effects as Polish companies are often subcontractors, and for instance, export car parts to Germany, which exports finished cars to the United States.
The new 15% baseline tariff on U.S. imports includes cars, a mainstay of central European exports. Although below a threatened 27.5%, it is a big increase on the 2.5% before U.S. President Donald Trump embarked on his global tariff announcements following his return to office in January.
Other countries in Central Europe also said the deal had eliminated uncertainty that has disrupted transatlantic trade, but said they expected a hit from the new tariffs.
The Czech finance ministry said on Tuesday U.S. tariffs will slow Czech economic growth by 0.2 percentage points for the remainder of the year and by 0.39 percentage points in 2026, citing preliminary estimates.
($1 = 3.6978 zlotys)
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That pledge was exceeded. The sophisticated supply chain Apple built in the country, with suppliers that Apple nurtured, is now being leveraged by Chinese companies, notably Huawei, to build sophisticated electronics products. Huawei's Mate XT is a more expensive phone with alluring features than the iPhone. Apple isn't expected to match these product capabilities until 2017. Apple has gone from leadership in design in this market, with the margins to match, to having serious competition. How could Apple have been so stupid? A fundamental concept of risk management is that you don't put all your eggs in one basket. Patrick McGee explains how this came to be in his outstanding book. McGee interviewed over 200 people, mostly Apple employees, to provide insights on this 'famously secretive company.' Apple's Historic Supply Chain Historically, Apple manufactured its own products across several regions. In 1983, Apple opened a highly automated plant in Fremont, California, to produce the first Macintosh computers. Apple established a presence in Europe with a plant in Cork, Ireland. This plant, which opened in 1980, later manufactured customized Macintosh computers for European markets. This is the historic way of hedging your bets and managing risk. Apple understood this principle. But as contract manufacturing emerged as an alternative to a company owning its own manufacturing plants, Apple experimented with this model and achieved positive outcomes. The theory behind contract manufacturing is that companies should focus on what they do best, their core competencies. In Apple's case, that was design. Initially, they were working with American firms and had plants in the US. But Taiwanese headquartered Foxconn proved to have better capabilities than its US rivals, and Foxconn won an increasing share of Apple's final assembly business. You can still practice effective risk management using contract manufacturers with plants in different regions of the world. Foxconn, at Apple's behest, did experiment with manufacturing in other regions of the world in addition to China. But Foxconn, a tremendously harsh taskmaster when it comes to their labor force, struggled to achieve the same level of quality, cost, and scalability anywhere but in their facilities in mainland China. Foxconn then committed to relying on production based in China. As Foxconn delivered better results than its competitors, they gained a larger and larger share of Apple's business. Apple's Strategy in Procurement Apple does not believe in win/win procurement or vested outsourcing. McGee points out that the iPhone accounts for fewer than 20% of smartphones sold globally, yet it garners more than 80% of industry profits. 'In no other market does a minority player command this kind of dominance.' 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