Under the Trump administration, the U.S. has adopted sweeping tariffs on nearly every trading partner, with a promise of more on a range of strategic sectors including industrial metals and critical minerals, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and automobiles. These actions have provoked countermeasures from China and others. While these developments are rightly seen as geopolitical, trade actions—and the uncertainty they create for market access and supply chains—have direct and increasingly material implications for companies in financial distress, and for their advisers.
This article is the first in a series that will analyze these intersections and consider how trade barriers function as both cause and complication in corporate…