President Trump’s “Liberation Day” is behind us, and tariffs have gone up, down, and sideways, often during the course of the same day, leaving supply chains in a state of disarray.
The only constant left is uncertainty, to the point where the global, WTO-moderated trade order has rarely been tested this hard and never in so many places at once.
“The multilateral trade system was designed for stability, gradual change, and predictability,” says Dr. Mia Mikic, former Director of Trade, Innovation and Investment at the United Nations. “What we’re experiencing now is the opposite: constant policy shifts, unpredictable tariff changes, and a trading environment where the rules can change overnight.”
What the current administration has delivered is a system shock.
And amidst all the shake-up, you could be forgiven for thinking the surface looks surprisingly calm. The Suez Canal is more open than it was when Ever Given famously wedged itself across its span, goods are still flowing, and prices haven’t pushed household budgets too far over the edge.
That calm can be misleading. It’s not that tariffs haven’t altered the system, because they have. But the apparent stability we see is thanks to thousands of experts working overtime to rewire their supply chains on the fly, with parameters that update daily.
And there’s almost no one to sing their praises.
The new imperative of supply chain management; predictive intelligence
Mikic recalls a not-so-distant past where supply chains had the luxury of time. “You would set up your HS codes, sign the trade agreements, and operate under those conditions for years,” she says. “Companies would plan expansions or new sourcing over a decade. Now, a tweet can change the preferred route for a product by the end of the week.”
The speed of change has made traditional mapping tools, even sophisticated ones, feel sluggish. Predictive intelligence has moved from a nice-to-have to a baseline requirement.
That shift has opened the door for firms like interos.ai. The AI-powered supply chain risk intelligence company maps and monitors more than 250 million companies and more than 11 billion supplier-buyer relationships against multiple risk signals, but what it really provides them with is a toolkit to rebuild resilience.
“Resilience has gone from a buzzword that is simulated on spreadsheets to a boardroom demand where you need to show exactly how it is operationalized,” says Ted Krantz, CEO of interos.ai. “It’s no longer enough to monitor risks. Companies need to anticipate and act before the risks impact your operations.”
The demand Krantz is describing is derived from something directly measurable: profits.
In a tariff-volatile world, the ability to model a change in duty rates in one jurisdiction and immediately see the downstream effects can be worth millions, if not hundreds of them.
“Clients are asking for systems that map relationships, run scenarios, and propose actionable alternatives in hours, not weeks because they know that that’s where the competitive advantage is right now,” Krantz says.
Mapping is only part of the equation. Clients now expect insight into which moves will keep goods flowing and margins intact. That expectation is pushing engineering teams to their limits.
“If our clients had their way, there’d be a new feature rolled out every day,” says Yardley Pohl, Chief Product and Technology Officer at interos.ai. “They want predictive analytics for specific trade lanes, AI-generated alternative routing plans, instant ESG scoring on substitute suppliers, and they want it all seamlessly integrated into their ERP systems.”
Pohl adds that the stakes are driving that urgency: “A single miscalculation on tariffs can erase the margin on an entire product line. In this climate, our users are not just asking for insights; they’re asking for decisions they can act on immediately.”
And it’s not just interos.ai feeling the surge. Providers of shipment visibility, dynamic rerouting, and risk scoring are all reporting unprecedented demand. The reason is simple. Every day a shipment spends idle in a port or gets re-routed without notice is money lost, sometimes irretrievably.
The supply chain planning games that keep the impact of tariffs at bay
As much as the system demands, it also rewards those who know how to play it.
Even sanctioned nations have found ways to adapt, Russian oil flowing through Indian ports before making its way to global buyers, Apple moving manufacturing to Vietnam to dodge certain duties, global retailers shifting seasonal production to friendlier jurisdictions on a quarter-by-quarter basis.
Just like water finds its level, supply chain teams find the lowest tariff rates as long as they have the tools and the time.
For Vic Chynoweth, CEO of Tempo, making this work in real time meant a change of tactics as well as mindset. “We used to talk about de-risking in simulations,” he says. “Now we’re in the ops room, running those scenarios in real time. It’s not theory any more, it’s the day-to-day life of supply chain planners. And when tariffs shift, the clock starts immediately because the entire company could be on the line.”
Just like the risks, the rewards for getting it right are equally outsized. “For a company like Apple, the right pathing decision can save hundreds of millions,” Chynoweth says. “For smaller companies, it’s a matter of survival outright. One wrong call on routing or sourcing can mean missing payroll which in turn topples the company.”
Chynoweth points to scenario planning as the unsung hero behind the calm we’re seeing at the eye of the storm.
“Agility is critical when tariffs change fast, but agility without a plan is chaos. Our clients are using technology to run dozens of scenarios, evaluate them against current market data, and choose a path that balances risk and delivery for customers and for the company. That’s the difference between resilience and just hanging on, and the supply chain staff is doing miracles with what they have at the moment.”
Indeed, thin margins, inflation-weary consumers, and suppliers who can’t always absorb higher costs make for a fragile environment.
The complexity is compounded by the fact that tariffs rarely move in isolation. A change in one jurisdiction can trigger reciprocal moves elsewhere, creating a cascade of new costs and compliance requirements.
Mikic warns that smaller companies are particularly exposed. “Large multinationals have teams dedicated to monitoring every policy shift, running models, and executing changes. Smaller firms are often relying on a single supply chain manager who’s also handling procurement, vendor relationships, and logistics. Without access to advanced tools, they’re at a severe disadvantage.”
And yet, many of these smaller players have proven surprisingly adaptive.
The key, Chynoweth says, is empowerment. “When you enable managers with the right data and the autonomy to act, they can do remarkable things. It’s alignment across the company that’s hardest to achieve, not the technical fix.”
The quiet victory for supply chains so far
For all the stress tests tariffs have thrown at the global trading system, the experts managing supply chains have, so far, kept the system afloat.
That’s not to say the work has been easy, or that the calm surface will last. But in an era of rolling economic shocks, they’ve done something remarkable: kept the world’s goods moving.
Krantz cautions that this isn’t a victory lap. “Resilience is a process, not an outcome,” he says. “You can be resilient today and brittle tomorrow if you stop adapting. The companies that will survive the next wave are the ones treating resilience as a core competency, not a crisis response.”
The risk is that this adaptability is being taken for granted. The same agility that’s keeping shelves stocked and factories running is powered by human judgment, not just AI dashboards. And the pool of people who can do it well is small — and getting smaller, as burnout pushes some out of the profession.
The longer this uncertainty lasts, the more strain builds in the system. Predictive intelligence may give supply chains more elasticity than they’ve ever had, but elasticity has its limits. Snap it too often, and eventually, it breaks.
For now, though, the game continues. Somewhere in a control room, a supply chain director is rerouting shipments, a project manager is revising risk models, and an AI engine is running thousands of tariff scenarios an hour. The calm you see in the ports and on the shelves is them, holding the line.
The question is, how much longer can supply chains keep it together?