Global financial markets have been in turmoil post the US “Liberation Day” announcements of a 10% universal baseline tariff and a set of higher, country-specific “reciprocal” rates on 57 trade partners with which the US has trade deficits (that have now been paused for 90 days, bar China). Stock markets have shed trillions of dollars, credit spreads have widened, oil prices have tumbled and currencies have gyrated wildly.
From a sustainability lens, if tariffs are sustained, they will raise the stakes for the survival or repeal of advanced manufacturing credits in the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) – the largest climate legislation in US history. Ehsan Khoman, Head of Research – Commodities, ESG and Emerging Markets (EMEA), discusses the reverberations of these tariff increases across the sustainability complex, wherein he believes that batteries and battery energy storage systems (BESS) are particularly exposed to the new tariffs given the limits to domestic US manufacturing.
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