The Tariff Wars Just Upended Your Supply Chain, Here’s How to Adapt.
Summary. The huge uncertainties unleashed by President Trump’s tariff war has made business planning almost impossible. To cope, managers need to take stock of the challenges. They should also take steps to better ride out the gyrations and prepare for what may lie beyond them. These steps include: make sure your organizations are prepared with country-of-origin documentation; analyze the feasibility of your manufacturing locations; and rethink the trading blocs in which you do business.
HBS Emeritus Professor Bruce Scott once compared capitalism to organized sports in which games are governed by a set of agreed-upon rules. Imagine that you are coaching a game in which the rules change every minute. How would you even play? As in sports, businesses need some level of predictability, and it’s highly disruptive when changes occur in the middle of the game.
If your business relies on international trade, this feels like the environment today. Here is a sample of some of the challenges facing supply-chain managers and some ideas on what to do until we regain some modicum of stability.
Current Supply-Chain Challenges
They include the following:
