As international tensions escalate over the imposition of tariffs on European nations expressing support for Greenland as it faces pressure from the USA, the UK Prime Minister has this morning addressed the nation over the need for cool heads to prevail over the crisis.
Having been here before, the media and entertainment industry has become aware of the need to factor in the potential impacts of US tariffs. Rob Ambrose, co-founder and CEO of Caretta Research, offers an insight into how the business might deal with the latest round of possible barriers to trade.
“When we first looked at this back when tariffs first emerged as an issue, we concluded that it’s not a huge impact—as the overall value of hardware sold by non-US vendors into the US is a relatively small slice of the overall media tech pie,” he tells TVBEurope.
“So far, fortunately, digital services like software and cloud have not been subject to tariffs Of course it does (potentially) impact certain vendors more than others, for example even those based in North America, but may be manufacturing outside. Back in April, we heard talk of moving manufacturing into the US (exactly the original aim of the tariffs of course) but I suspect little of this happened in reality.”
Acknowledging an apparent acceptance of an uncertain ‘new normal’ across the industry, Ambrose continues: “This time, everyone’s already used to constantly-changing tariffs, and I don’t think anyone’s going to be making long-term business decisions based on the President’s latest comments. The working assumption for many is that everything will change again next week.”
Ambrose stresses the need to prepare for wider economic fallout should the situation worsen, cautioning that impacts might be felt more broadly. “In any case, we should be more concerned about the potential destabilisation of the global economy,” he says. “Broadcast and media technology is an international business and if relations between Europe and the US become more fractious, that is likely to impact the entire media industry, and hence technology suppliers. That would be far more damaging than just tariffs.”
