President Donald Trump has announced new tariffs that will take effect in the next week, including an increased tariff from 25% to 35% on certain goods coming from Canada. And another 40 countries will see a new 15% tariff on goods coming into the U.S., including from trade partners in the European Union.

NJ Spotlight News spoke with Michele Siekerka, president and CEO of the New Jersey Business & Industry Association, about the impact the new rates will have on New Jersey businesses and consumers.

“The impact is going to be that the cost has to be assumed and absorbed somewhere,” Siekerka said. “The goals of the tariffs are to drive more manufacturing back to the United States. The challenge is this is all happening too fast, so while the ultimate goals may be great for the idea of creating new opportunities and jobs back home, we need a bigger pathway to get there, a longer runway to get there.”

“We don’t have enough workforce here, and we have critical manufacturing imports that we don’t make in America that we must source from elsewhere,” she said.

Market uncertainty continues as the latest U.S. jobs report was released, showing a major slowdown. Only 73,000 jobs were added for July; much lower than economists expected. This latest report also adjusted the numbers for May and June, coming in significantly lower than initially counted, indicating that the labor market is feeling the impact of the global trade war.

“Maybe our numbers were a little better on unemployment, less people on unemployment, but our unemployment rate has been higher than the national, and we should be concerned about that,” Siekerka said. “And we also have to recognize that the workforce shortages that we experience today are the result of not just lack of skills to get people into the right jobs …  But we’re going to have a demographic cliff in about a decade. Birth rates have been down, and we need to ensure that we can fill the jobs that we have.”