NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 With summer in full swing in the United States, retail executives are sweating a different season. It\u2019s less than 22 weeks before Christmas, a time when businesses that make and sell consumer goods usually nail down their holiday orders and prices.<\/p>\n
But President Donald Trump’s vacillating trade policies have complicated those end-of-year plans. Balsam Hill, which sells artificial trees and other decorations online, expects to publish fewer and thinner holiday catalogs because the featured products keep changing with the tariff rates the president sets, postpones and revises.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe uncertainty has led us to spend all our time trying to rejigger what we\u2019re ordering, where we\u2019re bringing it in, when it\u2019s going to get here,\u201d Mac Harman, CEO of Balsam Hill parent company Balsam Brands, said. \u201cWe don\u2019t know which items we\u2019re going to have to put in the catalog or not.”<\/p>\n
Months of confusion over which foreign countries’ goods may become more expensive to import has left a question mark over the holiday shopping season. U.S. retailers often begin planning for the winter holidays in January and typically finalize the bulk of their orders by the end of June. The seesawing tariffs already have factored into their calculations.<\/p>\n