Footwear Firms Rejiggering Supply Chains Will See Long-Term Benefits
The threat of higher tariffs may have provided footwear firms with an unintended benefit as they took charge of rethinking their supply chains.
That’s because U.S. President Donald Trump’s return to office for his second non-consecutive term had a built-in expectation that he would make good on his promise to raise tariff rates again.
And raise them he did. But this time, footwear firms were better prepared.
The footwear industry was under siege in the aftermath of COVID, with shipments on pause amid ongoing supply chain issues. With Chinese production costs rising, some firms were already in the midst of strategizing where else to go even before Trump raised the duty rate on imports from China during his first term back in 2019. But the nature of producing footwear meant moving production to other locations was likely a multi-year process. In the years since COVID, production remains largely in China, although Vietnamese factories had become the go-to place for the manufacture of athletic performance shoes. Indonesia, India and Cambodia are now also growing their footwear production base, as is Mexico and other Latin American countries.
Firms in the footwear sector began to move more aggressively their production to other locations outside of China once Trump won re-election in November. And they moved with quick speed to get ahead of any tariff increases.
At Wolverine World Wide, less than 10 percent of products are expected to be sourced from China in 2025, down from the mid-teens earlier this year, as the company targets “near zero” by 2026. Steve Madden Ltd. in May said it had already moved nearly all fall ’25 shoe production for its core brands out of China, ahead of its prior mid-teens target for fall ’25 and mid single-digits in spring ’26. Crocs Inc. CEO Andrew Rees has expressed concern about Vietnam, where its sourcing for the U.S. market is at 47 percent. Vietnam is set to continue with the next round of trade talks with the U.S. later this month.
In April, Trump unveiled his plan for global reciprocal tariffs, a move to get countries to re-negotiate their trade agreements with the U.S. Most of those tariffs are on pause through July 9, with the tariff rate set at a temporary 10 percent increase. The exception is China, which saw subsequent increases on some goods as high as 145 percent, but that’s now on hold through mid-August as the U.S. and China fine-tune a framework for an agreement that would see duties rise to 55 percent from its current pause rate of 30 percent.
Regardless of which trade agreements actually get done, the rethinking of footwear supply chains is expected to be beneficial for down the road. That’s true whether tariffs go up or remain the same. And while higher duties impact corporate profits, not to mention higher costs to consumers, moving production to multiple locations allows for better flexibility in keeping goods closer to where they are needed.
That’s because supply chain “disruptions are here to stay,” according to Venky Ramesh, AlixPartners’ trade and tariff war room expert, who was part of a webinar hosted by AlixPartners. He also spoke about the need for firms to map sourcing and supply chain exposure as well as scenario planning so they can make informed decisions. Other participants also spoke about investing in trade law knowledge, logistics and operations, as well as looking at production components to see if different classifications are possible that could result in lower tariff rates.