Good morning! There's a new Fortune 500 chief, the firm behind Wall Street's Fearless Girl statue cuts DEI, and Best Buy's Corie Barry is a voice to pay attention to on Trump's tariffs. Have a wonderful Wednesday.
- What to know. In late 2023, I interviewed Best Buy CEO Corie Barry at that year's Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. I came away from that conversation struck by just how much insight Barry's position atop the $42 billion-in-revenue electronics retailer gives her into the global economy.
At the time, she described what was then a "contradictory" macroeconomic environment. Consumers were in a "good place" spending at record levels, but the way they spent was changing. Electronics have traditionally been categorized as discretionary spending—although Barry has argued they should be considered a necessity—giving her early insight into where, when, and why consumers are pulling back.
So Barry is one CEO I would listen to closely when looking for insight into another major shift: the implementation of President Donald Trump's tariffs. Yesterday, a 25% tariff on goods from Mexico and Canada took effect; Canada responded with a plan to impose 25% retaliatory tariffs on $100 billion of U.S. imports. Meanwhile, the U.S. doubled tariffs on Chinese goods from 10% to 20%; China retaliated with a tariff on U.S. agricultural products. Mexico is expected to announce its own response this weekend.
Conveniently, Best Buy's Q4 earnings call was scheduled for yesterday morning, during which Barry answered a slew of analyst questions about tariffs. Her responses gave us perspective on not just Best Buy's business, but the entire consumer economy. "Trade is critically important to our business and industry. The consumer electronics supply chain is highly global, technical, and complex," she explained. She called the tariffs a "highly dynamic situation" with uncertainty about their "duration, timing, amount, and countries involved" and the "potential reaction of American consumers."
"Everyone in the industry is facing this—all the way to what gets passed on to the consumer," Barry said. "It's fair to say...that tariffs at this level will result in price increases."
Best Buy only directly imports 2% to 3% of its own inventory, Barry explained. So tariffs' impact on the consumer depend instead on the retailer's entire supply chain and tariffs faced by its vendors. "This isn't as simple as Best Buy decides to raise prices," Barry said. "This is a full value chain that starts with the manufacturing and then works its way all the way through." It will be a slowly felt impact depending on product category, she added. "These cost increases will slowly work their way into categories and then will also slowly work their way into price," she said.
Consumers, however, can't tell the difference between their go-to retailer raising prices and the costs of electronics components going up. "It's a volatile environment for the consumer," she added. "We're watching that and trying to understand how best do we meet consumer needs in that environment."
Best Buy's shares fell 13% after its earnings report. There will surely be more news to come on tariffs—and Best Buy may be positioned to influence what comes next. Barry said the company is "engaging with policymakers to ensure they have our point of view."
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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