“混乱本身就是一种税收。”随着不确定性的增加，企业主们开始缩减开支，经济衰退的风险也随之增加
【中美创新时报2025年3月17日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）时断时续的关税和时断时续的联邦补助正在迅速对地区经济产生影响。《波士顿环球报》记者Janelle Nanos 对此作了下述报道。
14 年前的这个月，海啸袭击了日本，Jeff Morrill 知道，其后果将波及半个地球，波及他在富兰克林和汉诺威的汽车经销店。
这场自然灾害肯定会颠覆日本汽车制造商的汽车供应链，因此莫里尔和他的合伙人戴尔·拉斯罗普（Dale Lathrop）争先恐后地为他们的斯巴鲁星球和克莱斯勒星球吉普道奇公羊经销商购买尽可能多的库存。
“我们一听到这件事就知道会影响汽车生产，”莫里尔说。“我们可以做些事情。”
今天，面对一场完全不同的海啸，莫里尔和拉斯罗普没有这样的计划。
在过去几周里，他们看到特朗普政府宣布征收关税，然后撤销，然后再次征收。加拿大和墨西哥是美国最大的汽车和汽车零部件供应商，这两个国家的产品被征收关税。后来没有了，但现在钢铁和铝被征收了25%的税。
莫里尔试图计算，这一切对斯巴鲁傲虎的价格意味着什么？
“这非常令人惊讶——而且没有政治动机——我很惊讶政府竟然想在市场上制造这种混乱，”莫里尔说。“我认为这对客户和企业主都没有好处。”
尽管从大多数指标来看，美国经济仍在向前发展，但不确定性正促使一些企业踩下刹车。
在新英格兰各地，像莫里尔这样的企业主都在关注反复的关税、对研究经费和联邦工作岗位的不断削减以及可能摧毁整个行业的行政命令，他们不知道该怎么做。有些人正在搁置交易，撤回大笔投资，或停止招聘。
这反过来又开始损害就业市场、消费者支出、GDP 预测和股价。
“混乱，”莫里尔说，“本身就是一种税收。”
最近几天，特朗普政府官员越来越多地承认经济衰退的可能性，但他们辩称，任何痛苦和不确定性都是短暂的，是广泛重组的一部分，经济在衰退结束后将变得更强大、更健康。但目前，当地商业团体的领导人表示，他们的成员大多只是感到无助。
马萨诸塞州联合工业公司首席执行官布鲁克·汤姆森 (Brooke Thomson) 表示，从加拿大采购原材料的地区制造商不知道如何为他们的商品定价。一家卡车运输公司告诉她，由于其大部分柴油来自北部，因此担心燃料成本。
“他们现在处于不知道如何准备的境地，”她说。“供应链本身完全不确定。”
此外，汤姆森说，她的许多会员公司都不敢大声说出他们的担忧，“因为他们担心可能会招致强烈的反对。”
“他们不想在这件事上搞政治，”她说。“他们只想经营自己的生意。”
康涅狄格州工商协会首席执行官克里斯·迪彭蒂马 (Chris DiPentima) 表示，他的会员也推迟做出重大决定，直到尘埃落定——结果却发现事情再次闹得沸沸扬扬。他说，许多会员没有投资新设备或设施，或者暂停了招聘，而寻求扩张的跨国公司也推迟了。
“这些决定（华盛顿的）的不确定性和迅速性导致了这种不可预测性，”他说，并指出许多关税和减税措施来得太快，“根本没有时间做好充分准备。”
华登互助银行首席执行官查理·卡明斯 (Charley Cummings) 表示，一些客户曾因美国农业部联邦拨款而被迫偿还“气候智能”基础设施升级，但该银行为新英格兰地区的农民和食品及农业企业家提供贷款。卡明斯说，他们不得不为已经花费的数十万美元买单。
卡明斯说，新罕布什尔州的一家农场借了钱，并已将大部分资金花在一个项目上，原本希望从 30 万美元的联邦拨款中获得补偿，但却被告知拨款计划已被取消，他们不会得到任何资金。
“企业讨厌各种形式的不确定性，你无法以比制造这种关于什么是现实、什么是虚张声势的政策不确定性更直接的方式制造更多的不确定性和混乱，”卡明斯说。“我们正在尽最大努力弥补差距，但很多情况都非常可怕。”
即使是那些职业生涯都在应对联邦法规的人也表示，正在发生的事情的随意性令人沮丧。
在切尔西新英格兰农产品中心经营同名批发公司的彼得·康达克斯 (Peter Condakes) 表示，西红柿的价格已经受到严格监管——部分原因是长期以来旨在支持美国种植者的贸易标准。现在，他说，在国内西红柿库存稀缺的时候，他面临着墨西哥种植产品价格可能上涨 25% 的情况。
“我对华盛顿目前发生的事情的抱怨是，似乎没有任何计划或知识可能受到影响，”他说。 “我告诉任何和我交谈的人：无论你想让我们做什么，我们都会照办。只要告诉我们你想如何运作。”
当然，这些反复的措施是在食品价格已经高得离谱的情况下出台的，这促使消费者减少购买，尤其是那些他们不需要的小奢侈品。这使得北安普敦和阿默斯特冰淇淋店的老板朱迪·赫雷尔 (Judy Herrell) 等经营者陷入成本上涨和消费者焦虑的夹缝中，面临的决定可能会让她的生意和整个经济蒙受损失。
随着可可、咖啡和鸡蛋的价格都在上涨，赫雷尔不得不在情况变得更糟之前争先恐后地采购产品。她说，虽然直接购买国内产品听起来不错，但这意味着她要为用来销售热巧克力混合物的玻璃罐支付两倍的价格。
“当我不得不以 10 美元的价格出售一个大号冰淇淋甜筒时会发生什么？”她说。“我什么时候会把自己的价格挤出市场？
所有这些动荡已经产生了一个明显的后果：赫雷尔推迟了招聘。通常到现在为止，她已经为繁忙的夏季招聘了 10 名员工；但今年到目前为止，她只招聘了 3 名员工。她已经听到人们说他们担心自己的钱包。
“他们说他们不知道我们的社会保障是否会维持下去，或者我们是否能够保住工作。他们紧紧抓住他们拥有的一切，”她说。“说实话，我也是。”
《环球邮报》的 Hiawatha Bray 为本报告做出了贡献。
题图：Dale Lathrop 在汉诺威的 Planet Subaru 停车场上出售一排排新的斯巴鲁汽车。他和他的合伙人正在想办法应对加拿大和墨西哥时断时续的关税。John Tlumacki/Globe Staff
附原英文报道：
‘The chaos is its own sort of tax.’ As uncertainty mounts, business owners hunker down and recession risk grow.
On-again, off-again tariffs and stop-and-start federal grants are quickly taking their toll on the regional economy
By Janelle Nanos Globe Staff,Updated March 14, 2025
Dale Lathrop with rows of new Subarus for sale on his lot at Planet Subaru in Hanover. He and his partner are trying to figure out how to deal with on-again, off-again tariffs on Canada and Mexico.John Tlumacki/Globe Staff
When a tsunami struck Japan 14 years ago this month, Jeff Morrill knew the aftereffects would ripple halfway around the world to his car dealerships in Franklin and Hanover.
The natural disaster was certain to upend the supply chain of vehicles from Japanese automakers, so Morrill and his partner, Dale Lathrop, scrambled to buy as much inventory as they could for their Planet Subaru and Planet Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram dealerships.
“We knew as soon as that happened that it was going to impact the production of vehicles,” Morrill said. “There are things we can do.”
Today, facing a tsunami of an entirely different kind, Morrill and Lathrop have no such plan.
Over the past several weeks, they’ve watched the Trump administration announce tariffs, then roll them back, then roll them out again. There were tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico, two of the largest suppliers of vehicles and automotive parts to the United States. Then there weren’t, but instead there is now a 25 percent levy on steel and aluminum.
What does it all mean, Morrill tried to calculate, for the price of a Subaru Outback?
“It’s very surprising — and without a political dog in the hunt — I’m surprised that an administration would want to create this kind of chaos in a market,” said Morrill. “I don’t think it serves the customers and it doesn’t serve the business owners.”
And even though, by most measures, the US economy is still rolling forward, the uncertainty is prompting some businesses to hit the brakes.
All over New England, business owners such as Morrill are watching the on-again, off-again tariffs, the start-and-stop slashing of research grants and federal jobs, and executive orders that stand to eviscerate whole industries, and don’t know what to do. Some are putting deals on ice, pulling back on big investments, or putting a halt to hiring.
That in turn is beginning to hurt the job market, consumer spending, GDP forecasts, and stock prices.
“The chaos,” Morrill said, “is its own kind of tax.”
In recent days, Trump administration officials have increasingly acknowledged the possibility of a recession, but argue that any pain and uncertainty would be short-lived and part of a broad restructuring that will result in a stronger, healthier economy when it’s through. But right now, leaders of local business groups say their members mostly just feel whiplash.
Area manufacturers who source raw materials from Canada don’t know how to price their goods, said Brooke Thomson, chief executive of Associated Industries of Massachusetts. A trucking company told her it’s worried about fuel costs since so much of its diesel comes from up north.
“They’re in the place right now where they don’t know how to prepare,” she said. “The supply chain itself is completely uncertain.”
What’s more, Thomson said, many of her member companies are afraid to speak up and express their concerns “because of the potential backlash that they could incur for saying they’re worried.”
“They don’t want to get political on this,” she said. “They just want to run their business.”
Chris DiPentima, CEO of Connecticut Business and Industry Association, said his members, too, held off on big decisions until the dust settles — only to see it get kicked up again. Many members are not investing in new equipment or facilities, or have paused hiring, he said, while multinational companies looking to expand have also held off.
“The uncertainty and the quickness of these decisions [out of Washington] is driving that unpredictability,” he said, noting that many of the tariffs and cuts are happening so fast, “there’s no runway to properly prepare at all.”
Charley Cummings, CEO of Walden Mutual bank, which lends to farmers and food and agricultural entrepreneurs in New England, said several clients have had federal USDA grants to reimburse “climate smart” infrastructure upgrades abruptly canceled, leaving them on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars they’ve already spent.
One New Hampshire farm had borrowed money and already spent most of it on a project, expecting to be reimbursed from a $300,000 federal grant, Cummings said, only to be told the grant program was canceled and it won’t get any money at all.
“Businesses hate uncertainty of all forms, and you couldn’t create more uncertainty and chaos in a more straightforward way than creating this sort of policy uncertainty around what’s real and what’s bluster,” Cummings said. “We’re doing our best to bridge the gap when we can, but a lot of these situations are pretty dire.”
Even people who’ve spent their careers navigating federal regulations say the haphazard nature of what’s going on is beyond frustrating.
Peter Condakes, who operates his eponymous wholesale company out of the New England Produce Center in Chelsea, said the price of tomatoes is already heavily regulated — thanks in part to longstanding trade standards designed to support American growers. Now, he said, he’s facing a possible 25 percent price hike on Mexican-grown products at the time of the year when domestic tomato inventory is scarce.
“My gripe with what’s going on in Washington right now is there doesn’t seem to be any plan or knowledge of what might be affected,” he said. “I tell anyone I speak to: We’ll work with whatever you want us to work with. Just tell us how you want to operate.”
Of course, the timing of these back-and-forth measures comes on the heels of already sky-high food prices, which are prompting consumers to pull back, especially on little luxuries they can live without. That leaves operators such as Judy Herrell, owner of ice cream shops in Northampton and Amherst, squeezed between rising costs and anxious consumers and facing decisions that could cost her business — and the economy at large.
With cocoa, coffee, and eggs all going up in price, Herrell has scrambled to source products before things get even worse. And while just buying domestic might sound nice, she said, it would mean paying twice as much for the glass jars she uses to sell her hot chocolate mix.
“What happens when I get to the point where I have to sell a $10 large ice cream cone?” she said. “When is it that I price myself out of the market?
All this turmoil has already had one clear consequence: Herrell has held off on hiring. Usually by now she has 10 employees lined up for the busy summer season; so far this year, she’s hired just three. She has already heard people saying they’re worried about their pocketbooks.
“They say they don’t know if our Social Security is going to hold, or if we’re going to be able to keep our jobs. They’re holding onto everything they have,” she said. “And to be honest so am I.”
Hiawatha Bray of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
