Cisco has said that it will limit the use of Chinese parts following the trade war with the United States.
CEO Chuck Robbins said the firm has taken steps to mitigate any adverse effects from the increases. China revealed last week that it would be hiking tariffs from 10 percent to between 20 and 25 percentfor some products.
“If you remember back many months ago when the 10 percent tariffs were announced we said, we had basically three phases to our strategy. The first was we would continue the dialogue with the administration to make sure they understand the impact.
“The second is, we’ll continue to do what we’ve always done which is optimise our supply chain, which we’ve been doing for the last 20 years. And then the third is, we will make pricing adjustments where necessary if needed. I’ll tell you that the team has been working incredibly hard over the last six months.
“And so last week when we saw the indication that the tariffs were going to move to 25 percent on Friday morning, the teams kicked in and we actually have executed completely on everything that we need to do to deal with the tariffs.”
Robbins said that, because of the plans that have been implemented, Cisco expects to see “very minimal impact” from the tariff increases.
Cisco’s chief financial officer Kelly Kramer added that the vendor still has some manufacturing occurring in China, but said that Cisco has “greatly, greatly, reduced [its] exposure” working with suppliers.
