OUR BEST IDEAS FOR THE C-SUITE

Welcome to the latest edition of the CEO Shortlist, a biweekly newsletter of our best ideas for the C-suite. This week, we dive into our latest thinking on tariffs and simmering trade tensions. You can reach us with thoughts, ideas, and tariff chat at Alex_Panas@mckinsey.com and Axel_Karlsson@mckinsey.com. Thank you, as ever.

—Alex and Axel

Now they’re here. Now they’re not. Leaders are grappling with day-to-day issues related to the rapidly changing global economic order. Understandably, they are hesitant to make strategic moves given the overwhelming uncertainty of the trade situation. Cindy Levy, Shubham Singhal, and their coauthors argue that traditional forecasting and planning methods are insufficient for this particular set of circumstances. What may help is to establish a geopolitical nerve center: a central hub that tracks, plans, and guides decision-makers in mitigating the impact of tariffs.

This flavor of uncertainty is new. But tariffs are old. Some say the Babylonian king Hammurabi was the first to enact tariffs on foreign goods, in his famous code. The Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930, and the trade war that ensued, has been more in the news lately. In this article from December 2024, our authors look back on the history of tariffs, examine some recent examples, and present a range of responses that executives can take to seize potential opportunities.

We hope you find these ideas novel and insightful. See you in a couple weeks with more McKinsey ideas for the CEO and others in the C-suite.  

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