Retailers Press Ahead Despite Trump's Tariffs: 'You Just Have To Be The Soviet Tractor'

Retailers are continuing with new projects and dealmaking despite tariff policy and uncertainty. 

Chicago-based Abbell Associates CEO Liz Holland is developing a $57M shopping center in Toledo, Ohio, and is pressing through the unclear climate as she prices materials for the project. 

“There's a certain amount of sensory overload where you just can't accept any more inputs to your equation about where to spend money in your business,” Holland said. “At a certain point, you just have to be the Soviet tractor: You have to have one forward gear and no reverse.”

Holland and many of her retail colleagues are steering into the skid as they weigh the impact of the Supreme Court's reversal of some of President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs and the implementation of new ones. Prolonged high tariffs could force companies’ hands, either raising prices for consumers or curtailing expansion and hiring plans.

The latest twist in Trump's trade saga, which has taken center stage for more than a year, came at the end of February. The Supreme Court ruled that the tariffs the president imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — which made up a bulk of the charges on importers — were illegal. Hours later, Trump announced he would impose a 10% global import tariff, continuing months worth of trade turmoil. 

Holland said subcontractors who recently got back to her on pricing didn’t adjust their bids, and she hopes that won’t change when the company actually goes to buy steel in March.

There is always contingency built into any construction budget to address physical hiccups that pop up during construction, Holland said. However, Abbell didn’t build additional tariff contingency plans into its budget because its numbers are tight and construction costs are already high relative to what retailers can pay in rent, she said. 

“The bigger the disruption, the harder it is to manage,” Holland said. 

That uncertainty isn’t stopping retail leasing.

National retail net absorption was almost flat in 2025 at 700K SF, according to a JLL retail market dynamics report. But the sector posted positive net absorption of 5.2M SF and 11.9M SF in the third and fourth quarters, respectively, canceling out the negative net absorption in the first half of the year and providing another signal that retailers may be pushing through the trade climate to execute deals.  

“People have kind of navigated the new normal with the tariff uncertainty,” Holland said. “Now we've just injected more uncertainty. The hope is that this whole issue goes away, but it feels like it's not going away.”

Lanné Bennett, executive vice president at Los Angeles-based consulting and brokerage firm Urbanlime Real Estate, works on large-format deals on the experiential side of retail. She said her deal flow hasn’t slowed as a result of the tariffs, even in the wake of Liberation Day.

“We're full-blow go,” Bennett said. “Let's get deals done. I'm busier than I've ever been.” 

Bennett said she tries to include clauses in leases that protect against tariffs that make projects economically unfeasible, although not always successfully. She said that is about the extent of the action around tariffs, as they didn’t come up at all in her conversations following the Supreme Court decision. 

In her experience, people are fatigued by trade policy discussions and just want to keep moving forward. 

“I thought the tariffs were going to have a much, much broader, bigger impact, just in general and in dealmaking,” Bennett said. “I have not seen that. I haven't felt that.” 

The heads of larger retailers have been muted in their responses to the latest round of tariffs. 

Retail executives haven’t publicly tipped their hands on earnings calls since the trade policy whiplash on Feb. 20. Larger retailers have similar talking points: Tariffs have added an element of uncertainty, but everything remains under control. 

On an earnings call Tuesday, Best Buy CEO Corie Barry pointed to its selection and price points as key to carrying the company through the turmoil. TJX Chief Financial Officer John Klinger said the company would be able to offset any potential tariff pressure.

New York-based retail consultant Kate Newlin said retailers are leaning on “deeply encoded” vocabulary as they quietly calculate how long they can weather the tariff storm and cross their fingers for help along the way. 

“They're saying to themselves, ‘Can we do this for another three years?’” Newlin told Bisnow. “In the hopes that somewhere along that trajectory, either the tariff strategy gets ruled out by the courts or that the regime gets booted to the curb.” 

Bankruptcies and store closures in early 2026 provide some insight into the state of a selection of major retailers this year, although to what degree tariff pressures caused their fates isn’t clear.

Saks Global decided to close nearly all of its Saks Off 5th locations as it looks to emerge from bankruptcy and pivot back toward luxury consumers. Eddie Bauer is considering its third bankruptcy since 2003 and plans to shutter most of its roughly 180 locations in North America. 

Another window into the real impact of the tariffs may come from refunds for charges imposed under IEEPA. 

Although there is widespread confusion about the refund process, with little resolution in sight until the legal system runs its course, they will be “the reality fix,” Newlin said. Lawsuits and earnings calls after damages are awarded are harder to obfuscate, she said.

Some retail stakeholders forecast possible impacts on retailers’ expansion plans. 

Bryan Riley, director of the National Taxpayers Union Foundation’s free-trade initiative, said larger retailers may be able to eat some of the costs brought on by tariffs for a short time. But when companies eat costs, it has different effects on the overall economy. 

“You don't have as much money to expand. You don't have as much money to promote people or to hire more people,” Riley said. “It's still a cost, whether it gets passed along to the final consumer or to the business that pays the tariffs.”

The uncertainty also drives caution in businesses, said Julie Park, a partner at Blick Rothenberg. If companies feel the base cost of the items they are sourcing might increase, they are less likely to expand or hire. 

“It's a cost,” Park said. “I've run a business, and any uncertainty about costs is not good for business. It's really that simple.”