Mass. CEOs see tariffs creating ‘maximum uncertainty’ (2025)

An employee shapes the frame of a pair of sunglasses at Randolph Engineering in Randolph, Mass. The company employs about 80, and was founded in 1973.Courtesy Randolph Engineering

If you’re confused about how the new tariffs being slapped on imports and exports will affect things, you’re not alone.

So are many CEOs who design and manufacture things here.

Since President Trump’s self-described “Liberation Day” last Wednesday, I’ve been talking with execs who run Massachusetts-based companies that make things such as sunglasses, 3D printers, electric vehicles and leather jackets.

Here are the five big things that have emerged from those conversations.

1. Confusion and uncertainty are paralyzing investment decisions

Max Lobovsky runs Formlabs, a Somerville company that sells a range of 3-D printers that can crank out prototypes and finished products in a range of materials. The lowest-end models sell for $3,500. The printers are made in China, with key components made in Vietnam.

Lobovsky says he isn’t yet exploring any changes to that setup.

“There’s no way any company is making serious investments and seriously reconfiguring their supply chain while this chaos is going on,” he says. “It’s literally changing week to week.”

“Chaos in itself is corrosive to confidence, planning, investing and action — virtually all the pulse beats of an economy,” says Michael van der Sleesen, founder of Vanson Leathers.

The company, which makes leather jackets and other motorcycle-related gear in its Fall River facility, marked its 50th year in business in 2024. It’s “too soon to say” what the impact on his business will be — but it could be positive, given competitors are making similar products at lower costs in places like Pakistan, Vietnam and Bangladesh.

Van der Sleesen adds that it has always been a challenge to sell his products in Canada, given the duties and taxes that get piled onto his products when they cross the border — while Canadian apparel has typically come into the U.S. without similar fees.

2. Manufacturing muscles can’t be pumped up overnight

America’s ability to make stuff — and to produce workers who can fill manufacturing jobs — is a muscle that didn’t atrophy overnight. And it likely can’t be rehabilitated quickly.

“Even with completely brand new, fully automated equipment, we could not produce a [face] mask here at a lower price than what would come in from China,” says Matt Boyd, who spun up mask production at a Boyd Biomedical facility in Lee early in the pandemic. “They could develop and ship a product to the U.S. at a lower price than our materials costs alone as a manufacturer here.”

Boyd’s company, started by his father in 1979, employs about 70 people and focuses on medical devices.

“Bringing an air conditioning plant back from Mexico, or starting to make dryer sheets in the U.S. — I don’t think there’s a lot of value there for America,” he says. “It feels like we’re chasing a white rabbit. That would really require a ton of automation, or low labor costs, or both.”

To envision moving production of Formlabs’ sophisticated 3D printers to the U.S., Lobovsky says that it would require “millions of jobs worth of activity, and massive industrial infrastructure has shifted to the U.S. That’s Trump and other peoples’ goal. But that would take decades. China could do it in five years. In America, it would take 20 years if we got serious about it.”

3. Some Mass. manufacturers see a competitive upside

Massachusetts manufacturers that don’t rely too heavily on components imported from abroad definitely see an upside in the tariffs announced last week. At Randolph Engineering, a maker of sunglasses in Randolph, CEO Peter Waszkiewicz expects some costs for raw materials and components to rise, but he says that the tariffs “could benefit Randolph as a U.S. manufacturer.”

Waszkiewicz says he supports the Trump administration’s tariff approach “as a necessary step toward addressing longstanding global trade imbalances. While there may be short-term challenges, I believe these measures will ultimately lead to a more level playing field.”

4. Single-source ingredients and components will create headaches

Many Massachusetts manufacturers in life sciences and technology require ingredients or components that may come from just one overseas supplier, Boyd says. “There isn’t an option to buy them somewhere else.”

In those situations, tariffs will create new costs for our state’s manufacturers.

5. Tariffs could make early-stage development more expensive

Many startup companies have become reliant on contract manufacturing firms in Asia to create early product prototypes for them quickly and cheaply. Often, when these prototypes entered the U.S., the startup paid no tariff because they fell under the $800 “de minimus” threshold — a loophole that Trump has announced he will eliminate.

Getting those early prototypes made will probably get more expensive, says Will Graylin, CEO of the electric vehicle startup IndiGO Technologies.

For now, ‘maximum uncertainty’ reigns

One of the people with some experience working with President Trump on tariffs is Colin Angle, the co-founder and former CEO of iRobot, the Bedford-based maker of home robots. During the first Trump administration, the company lobbied for and won a tariff exemption for its robotic vacuum cleaners, which are made in China, to allow iRobot to be more price-competitive with foreign rivals. (Part of the justification was that there were not comparable manufacturing facilities available in the U.S., Angle says.)

Now, having left iRobot in 2024 and focusing on a new robotics startup, Angle says, “Thank god I’m not running a public company right now, because nobody knows what to do. We’re at a point of maximum uncertainty.”

Even if Trump decided to hit “pause” on this round of tariffs, and granted companies a two- or three-month reprieve, Angle predicts that most companies would likely still be trimming their spending, potentially cutting headcount, redesigning supply chains and reducing their research-and-development investments in case the tariffs are reinstated at the end of that period.

“As a CEO, you’d have a near-obligation to assume that they’re going to be back, and start taking actions,” he says. “It’s not your job to say, ‘I hope they’ll all go away.‘”

Angle says the system of global trade that existed prior to “Liberation Day” evolved over decades to be “capitalistically optimal.” If big changes need to be made to create a more level playing field or more opportunities for workers, he says the key question is, “Are we taking the steps in a planful way? I think that is what has the markets so anxious right now. There’s a real desire to understand the plan.”

Stories by Scott Kirsner

• Boston built America’s innovation engine. Now it’s under attack by Trump
• This high-profile EV charging startup just left Massachusetts
• Mass. Gov. Healey says she’s playing defense against an anti-innovation Trump administration
• How the CEO of CarGurus is playing the car market right now