Archived post from legacy Decis reporting
Good morning and Happy Sunday,
The long-term effects of President Trump’s tariffs won’t be known for a long time: remaking America’s industrial base is a generational task. It will even be months before the final tariff rates are agreed so a great deal of uncertainty remains.
However, what is certain is that supply chains are being disrupted now but this is being overshadowed by the political noise and market watching.
This Bloomberg interview with the CEO of the Port of Los Angeles on Friday is worth 10 minutes of your time. He very clearly lays out where we are right now with respect to imports from China (down ~30%), the downstream effects (significant), and what restarting supply chains looks like (slow).
Assuming that many businesses front-loaded inventories in early April, which increases in import volume support, the rapid drop off in May signals the start of a supply chain black hole that’s going to ripple across the US economy.
Businesses that own their own supply chains should already have a good sense of what this means for them but most businesses are much farther along the supply chain so the effects won’t be as obvious. And because supply restrictions haven’t hit yet, many may think (mistakenly) that they’re not affected.
However, businesses need specifics to make their own plans, so I put together a more detailed report on the tariffs across industries and, critically, the estimated days-of-supply or inventory holdings by sector. This will help:
Identify where to expect price increases
See how exposure you have to Chinese goods and materials
Determine when supply tightening could hit
AI Notification and Disclaimer. This report was researched and generated by AI. Sources and citations are included to check the research and analysis, and you are encouraged to conduct your own in-depth planning and analysis before making critical business decisions. Decis Intelligence is not responsible for any loss, damage, interruption, or injury resulting from decisions made in relation to the subject of this report.
In combination, these are some of the key planning details you need to work out where your supply chain is going to get hit and how long you have to put alternative measures in place.
The key thing is that this is not a risk management exercise, preparing for something that might happen: this is interruption is already underway and you need to take action now.
All my best
