“That number is tracking now to be about $5 billion at the end of the year,” says Matt Priest, FDRA’s President and CEO.
The Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America (FDRA), estimates that its industry faces a $2 billion increase in import duties this year due to the tariffs introduced since April by the administration of the US President, Donald Trump.
“The Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America is an 81-year-old organization that represents 97 percent of the industry,” said Matt Priest, FDRA’s President and CEO. “As an industry that brings in 99 percent of the shoes sold in this country, we obviously rely on the ability to source products all over the world. In a typical year, we bring nearly two and a half billion pairs of shoes into this country. That’s over seven pairs of shoes for every single person in our country every single year.”
“When we look at our tariff burden, we typically pay about $3 billion a year in tariffs. We have for decades and decades. That number is tracking now to be about $5 billion at the end of the year. So it’s a significant increase,” he added.
Read the whole story in our sister publication Shoe Intelligence.
