AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Over the past few months, U.S. tariff policy has been kind of unpredictable. Rapid changes have left the markets reeling and consumers wondering about how their wallets will be affected. Mayors of cities that are close to U.S. borders are especially concerned about the economic consequences to their communities, like Bryan Barnett, mayor of Rochester Hills, Michigan, which is near Windsor, Canada. Mayor Barnett joins us now. Welcome.
BRYAN BARNETT: Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.
CHANG: Well, thank you for being here. So just to be clear, you are a Republican, but you have been very vocal about your disagreement with President Trump's tariff policies. Explain why.
BARNETT: Well, I - the challenge for me is really simple. It's - mayors are generally good storytellers, and the stories that I was hearing in my community - again, among many business leaders and companies that probably are traditionally more Republican-leaning - were that these tariffs were having real, on-the-ground challenges for them to manage, to monitor and to really predict. And the uncertainty around this sort of tariff policy the last few months has (inaudible) on edge.
We surveyed our companies. We have a - Rochester Hills is a city of about 80,000 in Metro Detroit, sort of just maybe 30 minutes from Windsor and in the heart of the automotive industry. And so we have a lot of folks in that industry, and we asked them...
CHANG: Yeah.
BARNETT: ...What's - you know, what do you think? Most of them - you know, again, all across the political spectrum - and the uncertainty was devastating. Almost 60% of them had completely zeroed-out capital investment for 2025, which is a big deal for me 'cause that's where innovation - creation generally happens. Thirty-five percent of them were anticipating significant layoffs.
And so I just wanted to tell the story, in a state that was very important to the president in the last election and an industry that's very important to the nation, that there's another side to this. And I think we're often listening to presidents and prime ministers on these tariff deals, but we're not hearing from local ownership, and that's who I'm trying to share the stories of.
CHANG: Well, make the argument to the president - because you have pushed for open and fair trade, specifically between the U.S. and Canada. How do you think tariffs specifically impede open and fair trade, exactly, across that border?
BARNETT: So imagine that you were the general manager or the CEO of a small company - not Ford or General Motors, but of a company with 40 to 50 employees operating in Rochester Hills. You work in the automotive industry, and you make stuff, right? And...
CHANG: Yeah.
BARNETT: ...That stuff that you're trying to sell has parts that come from Southeast Asia and maybe, you know, wiring that comes from Canada and electronics that come from Europe. Most companies don't sole source from the United States. They bring stuff in from - they bring their product in from other places around the world.
Imagine trying to figure out this tariff situation and trying to price your product appropriately in a tight market three months from now. How would you do it? How would you move forward with any sort of certainty about what that should look like, given the fact that there's starts and stops, that there's, you know, court cases and attorneys, certain parts could end up in the Supreme Court? You've got every number from 10 to 75 in terms of percentages on different countries. I mean, it is a really difficult game to navigate, and it just screams uncertainty.
CHANG: But let me ask you...
BARNETT: And if there's one thing that people hate, it's uncertainty.
CHANG: ...Despite that uncertainty, President Trump has said that ultimately, these tariffs will help grow American businesses and protect American jobs. What's your response to that?
BARNETT: That's the long game, and I don't think necessarily companies that I'm speaking to necessarily disagree with that. I mean, they want to see a strong America. I'm sure if they could produce everything in the U.S., they would. But the challenge is that the road to get there has been so challenging, so difficult to predict, so impossible to navigate, that it leaves them in this sort of lurch where it's very dangerous to invest. They don't know how to make these - are you going to make a multimillion-dollar decision now, three years from now that you're going to...
CHANG: All right.
BARNETT: ...Reshore all your manufacturing here, not knowing how it's going to go? So it's uncertainty that's making this very, very difficult.
CHANG: That is Bryan Barnett, mayor of Rochester Hills, Michigan. Thank you very much for joining us today.
BARNETT: Thank you so much for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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