The US raised broad tariffs to 15% over the weekend. EU–US trade deal ratification now looks uncertain and retaliation is being discussed.
Supply chain teams woke up to a different cost structure this week.
The first question most CFOs will ask: what does this cost us?
Most supply chain teams cannot answer that quickly. Not because they do not know their supply chain — but because the model that connects tariff rates to cost-to-serve, margin impact, and sourcing alternatives usually does not exist in one place.
It lives across three spreadsheets, two ERP extracts, and a Slack thread. Someone’s VLOOKUP becomes the decision engine.
I see this pattern every time tariffs move faster than planning cycles.
When tariffs move overnight, you do not have three weeks to build a business case. You need to show the financial trade-off before the decision gets made without you.
The companies that navigate this well are not the ones with the best prediction of what happens next. They are the ones who already know their cost exposure by SKU and source region, and can run a scenario fast enough to act on it.
How many hours would it take you to quantify the cost to serve and margin impact — and show viable alternatives — if your primary sourcing or customer region hit a 15% tariff?