‘Be calm,’ panelists urge Utah companies affected by tariff issues

Higher prices. Supply chain woes. Potentially damaged relationships with trading partners.

Whatever the detrimental impacts of higher tariffs are on Utah businesses, at a recent gathering of executives with tariff concerns, the least-prominent vibe was “panic.”

Indeed, despite the turbulent sea of tariff-related issues, panelists at the Crossroads of the World International Trade Summit exuded — and stressed the need for — calm and patience.

“I think the future is bright. I think this is a bump in the road that we’ll get through and figure out,” John Horton, chief financial officer at Provo-based traffic sensor company Wavetronix, said at the event, hosted by Zions Bank and World Trade Center Utah and taking place at the Zions Bancorporation Technology Center in Midvale.

“I think we have a ton to offer the world. The most innovative, most successful economic country that’s ever existed is right here. And I think we’ve got a lot of momentum on our side and we just need to stay our course.”

“This too shall pass,” Darin Parker, president of Salt Lake City-based PMI Foods, said of the tariff situation. “We’re going to get through this.”

Kimberley Honeysett, chief legal officer at X-ray imaging components company Varex Imaging Corp., based in Salt Lake City, said her company’s business plan is focused on the future. She described Varex as “country-agnostic.”

“It will be an international business into the future,” Honeysett said. “There are uncertainties that come up, trade situations will be inflamed, they will calm down. But having a global business and a global focus and having the ability to help people around the world, no matter where they are, is sustainable. We’ll persist.”

Still, the panelists’ companies have suffered impacts from tariffs. The early months of 2025 have featured “lots and lots and lots of meetings” at Varex, Honeysett said. The company has manufacturing operations in the Philippines, China, India and Salt Lake City. Its realm is the highly regulated medical industry “so we are not able to easily pivot because components have to get cleared and verified.”

Varex faces tariffs as it imports raw materials and components and also as it exports its products. “And even when we buy from U.S. manufacturers, by and large, they’re importing, so our prices are increasing,” she said.

The company is trying to remain focused on local strategies, pivoting on supply chain options, trying to anticipate tariff impacts and figuring out “how best to pivot in the environment while still serving our customers and users that our products are targeted to,” she said.

“Our Chinese business has fairly dried up,” Horton said. “It’s gone away. We’re being pretty measured in our responses in the last 108 days because we don’t know where this is all going. It seems like there’s a lot of changes coming every day. So, for the moment, we’re kind of biding our time, waiting to understand exactly where it’s going to land, and then we’ll make a strategy from there.”

The company has seen prices rise as a result of tariffs but is trying to view the situation as it has other trade disruptions, such as the COVID pandemic and port labor strikes. “We do view it as just a price increase and we’re going to have to figure out how to deal with it,” he said.

Parker said the current situation “is not new for us” because nations use tariffs and rewards for political gain and to alter other countries’ behavior. As a result, PMI is accustomed to tariffs and non-tariff barriers. “We have all of these situations all over the world that happen all of the time,” he said. “What we (the U.S.) are doing is just kind of acting like the rest of the world right now.”

Parker said he does not foresee empty store shelves as a result of tariffs because the U.S. can feed its own people. He does foresee a detente between the U.S. and China, with lower duties than have been proposed, and ultimately the two sides sitting down and producing a policy “that’s going to work” and creates a more fair and equitable relationship. He sees continued trade between the two nations as “a win-win situation for the Chinese people and the American people.”

“There’s no such thing as decoupling from China,” he said. “We can’t really decouple from Russia; imagine trying to decouple from China. … The smart people think there’s going to be a resolution.”

The panelists agreed that instead of broad trade wars, the Trump administration should instead focus on specific trade trouble spots.

“The rhetoric we’re hearing now is that we’ve been taken advantage of, across the board, and I’m not sure that’s necessarily true,” Horton said. “Let’s focus on the areas where the inequities exist and solve those issues. … I just wish we would pinpoint those and go specifically at those rather than the ‘peanut butter’ approach that we’re using right now.”

Of blanket tariffs, he said, “I really think they generate the trade war more than they solve the problem.”

While several nations have intellectual property and fair labor practice issues, “tackle tariffs first,” Honeysett urged.

“Specificity is important,” she said. “Don’t get bogged down trying to boil the ocean. Pick the topics, make a decision, inject some certainty into business. I think a lot of the challenges that we’re all having right now are because of the level of uncertainty. We don’t know what’s going to happen next and it’s really difficult to grow your business. The distraction that’s going on is immense, so the more that we can inject some certainty into the next however-long-it-takes, the better.”

“The uncertainty is the biggest problem we face,” Horton said. “Give us what [the tariff] it’s going to be and then we can react to it, and I think we can react positively to whatever it is.”

Parker said people should give the administration a chance “to see where they’re going.”

“Would I have handled it this way? No. But maybe they think they don’t have a lot of time … to put change into action,” he said.

Horton said he believes trade matters will achieve clarity as mid-term elections get closer because the administration cannot survive politically “with this chaos happening,” he said.

Asked about advice for Utah companies facing tariff and international trade issues, Honeysett suggested they increase communications among and across their teams, with suppliers and with customers; relying on relationships built over time; and understanding their partners’ motivations.

“I think we need to be calm, No. 1,” Parker added. “This is not the end of the world. We’re not going to have a decoupling from China. It’s impossible, OK? Will never happen, at least not right now.”

Companies, he said, should try to diversify and figure out where they want to have business operations. “I just think we need to calm down right now,” Parker said. “Let’s see how this is going to go. Cooler heads will prevail.”

As with any crisis, companies cannot react recklessly, Horton stressed. “We will see that we get through this, that this economy, for the most part, will flourish, maybe not in the short term. … So I would suggest not to be rash in your decision-making — to be measured, to be calm — and we’ll get through it.”

The panelists’ companies are part of a system that produced Utah exports totaling $18.2 billion last year, when the state also imported $21.9 billion from 154 countries, according to a report from the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute. International trade contributed nearly $8 billion to the state’s gross domestic product and supports more than 70,000 jobs in the state.

The two-day Crossroads conference, with activities in Midvale and Salt Lake City, featured keynote presentations and panel discussions involving prominent government and business leaders and attracted more than 1,000 attendees.