Confused and concerned, CEOs on Trump’s new tariff regime

Business leaders are scrambling to get their head around a new era of tariff complexity.

The bemused mood among European chief executives on Thursday came as U.S. President Donald Trump sought to reshape the global trading system in America’s favor.

The Trump administration slapped higher tariff rates of between 10% to 50% on dozens of trading partners just after midnight ET, following months of delays and extensions.

As of Thursday, most imports into the U.S. will now face a baseline tariff rate of 10%, although the overall tariff effective tariff rate is estimated to have climbed to more than 17%, according to the Yale Budget Lab think tank. That represents the highest level of tariffs since 1935, during the Great Depression.

Zurich Insurance CEO Mario Greco said on Thursday that he was “confused” by Trump’s tariff announcements, according to Reuters. He reportedly added on a press call that the U.S. tariff blitz appeared to “part of the game, to create chaos.”

The Swiss insurer, which does not expect a new era of global trade rivalry to impact its business, said it was well positioned over the coming months.

“Look, what is important for business is to have clarity and to have decisions. Business adapts and adjusts itself and we are prepared to any kind of conditions in the market, as we have done in the past, but clarity is very important,” Greco told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”

Oliver Bate, CEO of German insurance giant Allianz, shared Greco’s assessment of the tariff situation.

“If you are not confused, I don’t know what confuses a human being. But we have to see through the confusion,” Bate told CNBC.

“So, I can talk about being confused but our customers expect us to provide protection to them. Second, it doesn’t affect us very much directly. The thing that does affect us on the accounting level is the volatility around foreign exchange and the potential volatility in financial markets,” he added.

Major trading partners, such as the U.K., Japan and South Korea, have secured deals to get lower tariffs than those announced by Trump in early April. The European Union has also struck a framework agreement to lower tariffs on most EU goods to 15%.

Other countries have been hit harder by Trump’s trade war. The U.S. has imposed levies of 50% on goods from Brazil, 39% on Switzerland, 35% on Canada and 25% on India.

Carsten Knobel, CEO of German consumer goods and adhesives maker Henkel, described the current market environment as “very challenging and uncertain.”

“This is reflected due to the geopolitical tensions but also the trade and tariff conflicts — and also the military escalations we see in a lot of countries,” Knobel told CNBC on Thursday.

Worries about a lack of trade certainty was a common thread during earnings season.

“One of the things that for us, if I look at the medium to long term outlook, is certainly a concern is the lack of certainty,” Vincent Clerc, CEO of Danish shipping giant Maersk, told CNBC.

“One thing is having to deal with baseline tariffs or tariff regime that you know you can count on when you’re making investment decisions or when you’re making strategic decisions,” Clerc said.

“What we feel from a lot of our customers is that this uncertainty is causing a delay on investments and could have an impact on global growth and global demand as people are waiting to see what is the right decision.”

Maersk, widely considered a barometer for global trade, said a sustained period in which businesses can get to grips with the announced trade deals would help customers manage a new phase of globalization.

Siemens CEO Roland Busch, meanwhile, welcomed the passing of the latest tariff deadline, while making clear the development was likely to have a limited impact on the business.

“The most important point was, of course, to have certainty now, which is good. We would have wished for lower tariffs. We are clear for global trade but the impact on our Siemens business for this current fiscal year is minor,” Busch said.