The company has continued to make shoes New Balance 1600 Moins Cher in the U. S., even though that means settling for less profit. New Balance says the flexibility of its U. S. factories and turnaround times counted in days, rather than weeks, help make up for the higher cost. But a push by rivals to do away with tariffs on imported running shoes, as part of a larger trade deal, could finally tip the scales against its American strategy. "A rapid reduction of the existing [tariff] agreements would put our factories here at significant risk, " says Robert DeMartini, CEO of the Boston-based company, which is fighting to keep the tariffs in place.
Shoe tariffs have been around since the 1930s, when the U. S. still had a large domestic shoe industry that it wanted to protect New Balance 1600v2 Femme Rose avec Bleu vente from foreign competition. But today, the U. S. imports 99% of its shoes, mostly from Asia. New Balance, with sales last year of $2. 4 billion, views tariffs as one of several factors that keep its U. S. operations viable. The company has invested in new machines and cut out waste at its U. S. plants, which together employ 1, 350 people. It also helps that the company's American-made shoes tend to be pricey, retailing for as much as $275, and include designs first made popular decades ago that have been revived mainly as fashion accessories.
But even in its most streamlined form, shoe making remains relatively Homme New Balance ML2016 Pas Cher labor-intensive. The upshot, New Balance says, is that it still costs 25% to 35% more to produce shoes in the U. S. than it does in Asia. Shoe tariffs, which vary widely depending on things like the materials involved, add about $3 to $5 to the cost of a pair of midprice imported running shoes. While that might not seem much, New Balance says the loss of that buffer would make the New Balance 300 Vintage Baskets Blanche Bleu Atoll economics of its American-made strategy that much harder. If the tariffs go away, "it puts our competitors in a position to realize an even greater margin than we are, " says Matthew LeBretton, a new Balance spokesman, "and they can then reinvest that in their business. "
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