Nike, Skechers, Foot Locker and More Footwear Stocks Soar on Trump’s Latest Tariff Move
Stephen Garner
Senior Editor
Shares of Nike, Deckers, Skechers, Wolverine Worldwide and more surged on Wednesday afternoon following President Trump’s move to place a 90-day pause on his previously announced reciprocal tariffs on most of 75 of the country’s key trading partners.
Footwear is in the spotlight as one of the most impacted categories from these reciprocal tariffs, with Asian countries like Vietnam and Cambodia — where a large portion of shoes sold in the U.S. are produced — were facing tariffs as high as 50 percent.
Nike, which makes half of its footwear in Vietnam, closed the day with its stock up 11 percent. Deckers shares rose more than 13 percent, while Skechers shares have increased more than 11 percent, Wolverine Worldwide has seen shares jump 22 percent and Crocs is up 11 percent. VF Corp., parent of Vans and Timberland, jumped nearly 28 percent.
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Among footwear retailers, Foot Locker jumped nearly 20 percent and Dick’s Sporting Goods was up over 16 percent.
All told, the Dow Jones closed the day up nearly 3,000 points.
The strong reaction on Wall Street comes as the president attributed the backtracking to the fact that “these countries have not, at my strong suggestion, retaliated in any way, shape, or form against the United States.”
Trump’s change of tune is in stark contrast from his sentiment earlier on Wednesday. Indeed, the stock market was rocked by news in the early morning hours that China had drastically escalated its retaliatory duties on the U.S., and the European Union approved 25-percent tariffs as a countermeasure to the president’s steel and aluminum tariffs, announced last month. “BE COOL! Everything is going to work out well,” Trump Truthed as the markets trembled.
But by early afternoon, the President seemed to realize all was not, in fact, cool. Hitting back at China, Trump posted that he would raise the stakes in the trade war, upping import duties on China-made goods to 125 percent, effective immediately.
Ninety-nine percent of the shoes sold in the United States are imported from primarily China, Vietnam and Indonesia. According to data from the American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA), 61.9 percent of all shoe imports come from China, followed by 21.4 percent hailing from Vietnam. Indonesia (6.9 percent), Cambodia (3.9 percent) and India (1.3 percent) round out the top five shoe importers to the U.S.
