Either you're living under a rock on you're on a wild rollercoaster with the rest of us as the tariffs, threats, and postponements come thick and fast. This is, unfortunately, not an easy time to be doing business in the pro AV industry (or most industries for that matter). President Trump made tariffs a central premise of his campaigns, and they have been a clear priority for him in his presidency so far.

Right now, the biggest issue is uncertainty. It's not clear what the goal is or what the final tariff levels and targets will be. This is a large headwind for investments. How do you promise a price to an end user when you don't know if you'll have to pay a 25% or 50% tax on the product set? How does an end user set budge for a major capital project when the equipment could possibly be massively more expensive? These questions lead to a pause on some spending, especially longer-term investments.

Looking a little farther into the future, the tariffs themselves are the biggest issue. Assuming they persist or worsen--which seems safe given the campaign promises and actions so far--businesses stand to pay substantial taxes on many imports. This is a huge challenge that is softened by two facts. The first is that there are many ways to minimize tariff liabilities. Some are easy, like getting product in-country before the tariff goes into place or buying domestically. Most are more complex, like taking advantage of bonded warehouses or creatively centering more value creation in-country. In our just released Macroeconomic Trends Analysis (META) report, we go deep on these strategies, as well as covering data about what AV companies are doing so far. That report is available to Silver and Gold AVIXA members here.

The second fact that softens the huge challenge is that challenges can actually be good for some businesses. When a challenge takes the form of reduced demand, that's just flat out bad. But when a challenge increases the difficulty of operating your business--and this is primarily how we see tariffs posing a challenge--that is an opportunity. Smart businesses will better optimize to avoid the tariffs as much as possible, reducing their costs and gaining an edge on the competition. That won't make the tariff era fun or easy, but it could make it profitable.