SPRING 2025

36THE DISTRIBUTOR’S

36THE DISTRIBUTOR’S LINKJim TruesdellJames Truesdell is Chairman of Brauer Supply Company, a distributor of specialty fasteners,insulation, air filtration, and air conditioning with headquarters in St. Louis. Mr. Truesdell isAssociate Professor at Saint Louis University’s Chaifetz School of Business where he has taughttheir opening MBA class for the past twenty years. An attorney and frequently published writer,he is the author of “Total Quality Management: Reports From the Front Lines”.TRUMP SETS RAPID PACE OF EXECUTIVE ORDERS -WILL IT BE A BOOST FOR BUSINESS?Just as promised, President Trump hit the groundrunning in the days and weeks following his inauguration.He immediately signed a pile of executive ordersrolling back actions of the Biden Administration andlaunching sweeping plans to shrink regulation andsend the nation and the business environment in anentirely new direction. We can’t say he didn’t tell us. Heseems intent on doing what politicians normally do notdo—that is doing exactly what he promised to do in thecampaign. He shook up a shocked federal bureaucracyand work force and roiled the international communitywith aggressive statements and an instant impositionof large tariffs (from which he pulled back and delayedafter offers of cooperation from some intended targets).Is this the style of leadership we are going to becomeaccustomed to for the next four years? I suspect so,but maybe we see a pattern which tells us not to get soexcited or concerned at first glance.Clearly, the President sees things as a series ofdeals and he leads with an extreme position to setthe parameters of what will be negotiated. We see thistype of strategy in a lot of business dealing, but weare unaccustomed to it where the deal making is outin public for all to see in a political setting. Taking amaximum position at the start of the negotiation opensup a leader to media statements of shock and politicalopponents raise questions about the moral vacuum andCONTRIBUTOR ARTICLEinsanity the President is operating under. The differencehere, unlike his predecessors in the office, is that thisparticular president doesn’t seem to care what the initialpublic reaction is. He is waiting for his opponents tostart to deal within the framework he has established.Thus, in the case of the hefty tariffs he announcedone week into his term he then put them on hold fortyeighthours later when he received signs of some tradingpartners being willing to deal on issues of consequence.Look at the financial markets’ reaction to this. Afterhis weekend tariff announcement the markets brieflywent into a tail spin on the first Monday morning onlyto limit the damage as the day progressed and thenbounce back when there were signs of other countries’willingness to negotiate. We are going to have to getuse to this. Manufacturers and distributors may have to“keep their powder dry” at the first sign of events thatwill move prices before reacting, until it appears there isreason to immediately change their pricing strategies.CONTINUED ON PAGE 98