About Terrence Curtin
In a November 2018 interview with CNBC, Terrence Curtin, CEO of TE Connectivity, discussed the impact of U.S.-China trade tariffs on his company. Curtin stated that tariffs and trade rhetoric contributed to a "moderation in growth" and created uncertainty, but he emphasized that TE Connectivity mitigates exposure by maintaining design centers and localized manufacturing globally, with a balanced supply chain developed over the past decade. He expressed support for "global free trade that's fair" and said reconciliation in trade talks would provide the certainty business leaders seek.
Curtin noted that while tariffs themselves have a small direct impact on TE Connectivity, the broader risk is a global slowdown that could affect end demand. He pointed to ongoing innovation in areas like electric vehicles and autonomous driving as ways the company adapts, but acknowledged that passing tariff-related inflation to consumers could be difficult for many industries.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Terrence Curtin's recent appearances.
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Transcript (9 segments)
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Terrence Curtin0:10
Centers of the world and we don't view innovation is changing how it's done around the world. We stay close to it and that's how our engineers bring value. But that being said, we have seen what has been over the past couple of years of very stable growth environment globally. And even when we guided here about a month ago, we did see some moderation in growth, we did see some changes. And certainly I think tariffs and some of the trade rhetoric are part of it. But certainly we saw that geographic slowness occur both in Europe as well as in Asia. And I think that's what we're all watching. And as a business leader, we all like certainty, we all like to know where we place our bets. And right now I think we're all dealing with that, and that's coming into the discussion we have about global trade.
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Interviewer0:53
So you are hoping pretty hard, I would imagine, that there are some...
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Terrence Curtin1:10
Extremely broad of where we innovate with. And we're a third in the United States, third in Asia, and third in Europe. And we see those design centers continuing. So we would like to see reconciliation of some sort so we can get the certainty that we all business leaders like.
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Interviewer1:24
You've said that even without that, even if the tariffs continue, even if the trade talks don't go well, that you should be able to handle it. How well?
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Terrence Curtin1:32
How we handle it is through innovation and where we've deployed ourselves around the trends of the world. Like you mentioned, we're in automotive, what's happening in electric vehicles and what's happening in the connected car or the autonomous vehicle. That's not going to slow down. And certainly how we design for it...
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Interviewer1:49
That seems like a difficult thing to innovate your way out of.
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Terrence Curtin1:51
Well, two things. When it comes to what we do, the tariffs themselves are pretty small of what they impact us locally. So if we're dealing with a customer that's in Asia or a customer in Europe, our supply chain we very much over the past 10 years balanced it. But certainly there's other industries that have the item that you're talking about, which says this is real inflation that comes in. And many companies are looking at how they push it on to their customers. So what would impact us would be a global slowdown. Slowdown absolutely would be how does it impact end demand more than what it actually impacts on our business.
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Interviewer2:37
Terrence, want to thank you for coming in. I wish we had more time. I hope you'll come back again because I'd like to dig a little deeper into your business. Thanks.
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Terrence Curtin2:47
Thank you, Becky.
