‘Bad for All’ if US-China Trade War Becomes ‘Some Nasty Hurricane,’ Says Jabil CEO 

Contract manufacturer Jabil has the “agility” to manage “trade and tariff issues” if they create no more than “some choppy seas and a storm here and there,” said CEO Mark Mondello on a Tuesday earnings call. If, however, U.S.-China trade frictions “become some nasty hurricane, I think it’s going to be bad for all,” he said. Jabil, like “everybody else,” is playing wait-and-see as U.S. and Chinese negotiators try to hammer out a comprehensive trade agreement, he said. “In terms of the macro, we’ll see what happens over the next 60, 90 days,” he said. “If the tariff and trade issues get resolved, that’s great.” If not, “there’s nobody that has our scale that can move product around with the agility and the flexibility that we can and, in fact, we do that all the time,” he said.