Razor Navigates Trump-Era China Tariffs With a Bold Supply Chain Overhaul
When the Trump administration began rolling out sweeping tariffs on Chinese imports, businesses across nearly every consumer goods sector scrambled to adapt. Among them was Razor, the iconic designer of personal ride-on vehicles best known for its kick scooters, electric scooters, and hoverboards. Rather than absorbing mounting import costs or simply passing them on to consumers at checkout, Razor took a more structural approach — one that fundamentally changed the financial relationship between the company and its manufacturing partners.
According to Bryan Wood, Razor's Vice President of Global Supply Chain, the company made a decisive shift: instead of paying import duties itself, Razor restructured its agreements to transfer that financial burden directly onto its manufacturers. It's a move that reflects a broader trend of American brands rethinking legacy supply chain models in response to an increasingly volatile trade landscape.
Understanding the Tariff Pressure Facing Consumer Goods Brands
To appreciate why Razor's pivot matters, it helps to understand the scale of the tariff challenge that brands relying on Chinese manufacturing have faced. The Trump-era Section 301 tariffs, first introduced in 2018, imposed duties ranging from 7.5% to 25% — and in some categories, even higher — on hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of Chinese goods imported into the United States. For companies like Razor whose products are designed and sold in the U.S. but manufactured in China, those percentages translate directly into significant margin erosion or price increases that can dampen consumer demand.
Ride-on vehicles, electric scooters, and similar personal mobility devices involve complex assemblies of motors, batteries, metal frames, and electronics — most of which have historically been sourced from Chinese supply chains. Each of those components can carry its own tariff exposure, meaning that by the time a finished product reaches American shores, the cumulative duty burden can be substantial.
The Strategic Shift: Moving Duty Liability to Manufacturers
Razor's response, as articulated by Bryan Wood, centered on renegotiating the terms under which goods are sold to them by their manufacturing partners. By shifting from a model where Razor assumed import duty costs to one where manufacturers bear that liability, the company effectively changed the economic calculus of its supplier relationships.
This kind of arrangement — sometimes structured through changes to Incoterms, the internationally recognized rules that define who bears costs and risks at each stage of a shipment — requires manufacturers to price their goods accordingly. In practice, it pushes suppliers to either absorb the duties, find ways to reduce their exposure through sourcing or production adjustments, or negotiate a new price that factors in the added cost. For Razor, the benefit is greater cost predictability and insulation from the direct financial hit of import duties.
This isn't a simple or cost-free maneuver. Suppliers who are asked to shoulder additional financial risk may push back, demand higher prices, or seek alternative customers. The success of this approach depends heavily on the leverage a brand has in its supplier relationships, the volume it represents, and its willingness to diversify its manufacturing base if current partners can't accommodate the new terms.
Why Supply Chain Agility Has Become a Competitive Advantage
Razor's restructuring is a textbook example of why supply chain agility has moved from a logistics buzzword to a genuine source of competitive advantage. Companies that had built lean, single-source supply chains optimized purely for cost efficiency found themselves exposed when tariffs arrived. Those that had invested in supplier diversification, flexible sourcing strategies, and strong supplier relationship management were better positioned to adapt.
Beyond tariff management, the broader lesson here is about resilience. The disruptions of the past several years — from the COVID-19 pandemic to geopolitical trade tensions to port bottlenecks — have collectively demonstrated that the lowest-cost supply chain is not always the most valuable one. Brands that can pivot quickly, renegotiate terms, shift sourcing geography, or restructure cost responsibility are the ones that protect margins and maintain product availability when conditions change.
What Other Brands Can Learn From Razor's Approach
Razor's experience offers several practical takeaways for other consumer goods companies still wrestling with their own tariff exposure and supply chain vulnerability.
- Revisit your Incoterms and supplier agreements. The terms under which you take ownership of goods and accept cost liability are negotiable. Many brands haven't revisited these agreements since they were first established, even as the trade environment has changed dramatically.
- Map your total landed cost accurately. Duties, freight, insurance, and compliance costs all contribute to what it actually costs to get a product into your warehouse. A clear picture of these costs is essential before you can make smart decisions about how to restructure them.
- Build supplier diversification into your long-term strategy. Even if you can shift duty burdens onto existing suppliers today, geopolitical risk means that manufacturing concentration in any single country remains a vulnerability. Vietnam, Mexico, India, and other emerging manufacturing hubs continue to attract investment from brands looking to reduce China dependency.
- Invest in supply chain leadership with strategic capability. Razor's ability to make this pivot reflects the kind of senior supply chain leadership — represented in Wood's VP-level role — that treats sourcing and logistics as a strategic function rather than a back-office cost center.
The Bigger Picture: Trade Policy Uncertainty Isn't Going Away
While the specific tariff rates and targeted product categories have shifted depending on the administration in power and the state of U.S.-China trade negotiations, the underlying dynamic is unlikely to resolve itself cleanly or quickly. Brands that treat supply chain restructuring as a one-time fix in response to a specific tariff event are likely to find themselves caught off guard again. The more durable approach is to build supply chains that are inherently more flexible, with multiple sourcing options, strong supplier relationships across geographies, and commercial structures that don't lock in unnecessary cost risk.
Razor's move to shift import duty liability to its manufacturers is, at its core, a risk management decision — and it's one that reflects a maturing understanding of what it means to design and sell consumer products in an era of persistent trade uncertainty. For the broader industry, it's a signal worth paying attention to.