Kelsey Wilson, founder and CEO, BlackLines Financial, joined "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss how business owners can prepare for the effects Trump's tariffs will have on the economy.
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00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes.
00:07Joining me now is Kelsey Wilson, founder and CEO of Black Lines Financial.
00:12Kelsey, thank you so much for joining me.
00:14Of course, of course. Thanks for having me.
00:16I really want to talk about where we are right now with President Trump's tariff plan
00:21and the volatility that it's caused.
00:24President Trump said on Friday that there will unlikely be another 90-day tariff pause
00:30and it seems that he and the White House are in full-out deal-making mode with other countries.
00:36But over the past few weeks since he announced his tariff plan, global markets have been roiled
00:41and the word that can really characterize the moment that we are in is a moment filled with uncertainty.
00:47As a financial planner, what are your thoughts on this uncertain moment?
00:51Yeah, for sure. Definitely uncertainty really wraps and really tells the story of really what's
00:58happening right now. So when we think about this moment, things about this moment of time,
01:04this uncertainty does really cause what we call on the fear side of things.
01:09So when we have uncertainty, it produces fear and then emotional responses around fear.
01:15So at the end of the day, it really is important to really know where we're at.
01:19And when it comes to where we're at in the days, we're in a space where tariffs are changing the
01:25landscape of what's happening in the economy. So as that landscape is shifted, it's going to be
01:31very, very important for executives at companies, which will be able to be able to look at what's
01:38happening and get to a place back to profitability as these uncertain things are happening.
01:44So with that happening, with these landscapes changing, I'm pretty confident that executives
01:51will be able to navigate these new landscapes, navigate these new tariffs and come back on top,
01:59just like they've done over the past pretty much hundreds and hundreds of years around the market.
02:03Like you said, with the uncertainty comes fear. How does a business owner first, let's talk about
02:11business owners first. How would what would you recommend that they do to really navigate this
02:16time full of uncertainty?
02:19Yeah, I think the biggest thing with that is really being informed, staying informed on what's
02:24happening, because essentially what's happening is there is that landscape shift and there's going
02:29to be things that didn't make sense for a business owner to do last year that make a lot of sense to
02:34do this year. And vice versa, things that they did last year doesn't make sense to do this year.
02:40So it's really important to stay informed, stay really tight with your financial plan
02:44and making sure that you're staying on top of that and updating things accordingly. So that way,
02:50as things adjust with the new landscape of tariffs, your financial plan and your strategies are also
02:57adjusting along with it. When you're looking at your financial plan, what's at least one thing
03:03you would say didn't make sense to do last year, but now in light of this uncertain tariff time would
03:09make sense to do this year? Yeah, that's a really great question. And when it comes to business owners,
03:16a lot of business owners are maybe taking hits when it comes to the tariffs. Maybe their structures
03:22may have changed and their profitability might be a little bit lower this year. So if their
03:27profitability is a little bit lower with these current times, it may make sense to evaluate
03:33their tax strategy. And with that being said, maybe they have some pre-tax dollars and different
03:40retirement structures that may make sense to look into converting those over to post-tax strategies.
03:46On that end, being the fact that the landscape is changing, they may be taking a little bit of pause
03:51on higher profits like they were doing last year and kind of moving things around to kind of make
03:56sure that they're taking advantage of these adjustments. So that way, when they get back to a
04:01level of profitability, they pretty much move the musical chairs around into the right spots.
04:06So that way they can continuously grow on their financial journey.