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While tariffs have long been a tool of trade policy, 2025 was a year that highlighted their sheer impact on global supply chains. Every shift, every adjustment; all of it creates a ripple effect on everything from inventory to pricing, to lead times and beyond.
Given the ever-changing nature of tariffs, today’s teams need greater awareness and visibility so they can account for these shifts in their design, sourcing and procurement decisions. Both market intelligence and AI-enabled capabilities offer potential paths forward in this regard.
Tariffs are just one more consideration in a long line of things that today’s supply chain professionals need to consider in the course of their daily work. The problem is that the Harmonized Tariff Schedule is roughly a 4,400-page document.
No single person (or team, for that matter) can keep up with something of this scale, especially in real time. Even if time and resources could be dedicated to this, monitoring the ripple effect each tariff has across the supply chain creates even more uncertainty.
As Eric Loeb, executive vice president of government affairs at Salesforce said recently, “The sheer pace and complexity of global tariff changes make it nearly impossible for most businesses to keep up manually.”
As a result of this new layer, organizations around the globe are quickly learning the value of market intelligence and AI-enabled capabilities. According to Zack Kass, futurist and former head of OpenAI’s go-to-market strategy, “Tariffs actually present AI’s moment to shine.”
The most significant opportunity presented by tariff challenges is the chance for teams to achieve better agility and awareness. However, it can be difficult to know where to start. Intelligence is everywhere, and AI isn’t hard to find, but how can these things be integrated into existing processes?
In an industry where firefighting is the norm, and strategic changes are slow, tariffs are forcing organizations to find new ways to accelerate their digital transformation.
While every organization is different in terms of the best approach, there are certain capabilities that can be achieved quickly, with even faster results in terms of navigating tariff uncertainty.
Here are three examples:
Monitoring Market Changes in Real Time
As 2025 showed, the tariff situation can change drastically from one day to the next. Teams need the ability to track news announcements and industry news, and how they will affect everything from demand to inventory, to pricing, lead times and more.
Custom news alerts can assist with this, but purpose-built solutions are needed to filter through the noise. A perfect example is the recent ban of Nexperia chip exports from China. While the ban was recently lifted, the initial news sent a shockwave through global supply chains. Businesses scrambled to find suitable alternatives to Nexperia chips, which had become non-viable overnight.
Such a shift creates widespread panic, which can drive up demand, pricing and lead times in equal measure. Not only that, but these new alternatives must also be assessed for tariff-related risk.
Country-of-origin has become a key metric in this regard, leading to the creation of tariff calculators that can help teams harness market intelligence to better understand the cost implications of each part on their bill of materials (BOM).
By connecting teams to external, real-time market intelligence, professionals across design, engineering, sourcing, procurement and supply chain can all make more informed decisions.
Deeper Visibility into Future Cost and Risk
Many organizations have some level of visibility into tariff-related cost and risk for their current suppliers and portfolio, but more granularity is needed at the BOM and component level to assess future impact.
Tier-2 and -3 visibility is important as well. Teams should also focus on their product innovation portfolio. Each time a new product is introduced, it creates a new supply chain as well, with its own current and future considerations.
These new products will most likely be more impacted by tariffs but, ultimately, a full view of cost and risk is needed as early as possible in the product lifecycle.
This is known as a “shift left” approach, in which market intelligence and AI-enabled insights are introduced during the design phase of the product lifecycle.
Access to external, real-time data, filtered and organized by an AI platform allows teams to choose parts that balance price, lead times and tariff-specific factors like country of origin.
Collaboration Within a Single Source of Truth
Market intelligence and AI-enabled solutions function most effectively when they are combined with cross-functional collaboration that breaks down silos and creates a digital thread between engineering, sourcing, procurement and supply chain.
By connecting people and processes to external data, teams no longer make decisions in a vacuum. Engineering can understand how part selections affect procurement, and vice versa.
Instead of teams working within static, spreadsheet-based BOMs, a single source of truth also offers the opportunity to work within a “living BOM” that always reflects the latest market intelligence.
Stay Ahead of Tariffs in 2026
The most effective approach to tariff-related risk in supply chains is a proactive one. By utilizing market intelligence at the part-level, combined with AI-assisted organization and targeted insights, teams can circumvent issues before they become significant issues.
As with any technology, however, it’s crucial that teams also adjust their organizational structure to become more collaborative. By connecting people and processes with these technologies into a cohesive digital thread, it becomes possible to make more informed, more profitable decisions from the beginning of the product lifecycle.
Richard Barnett is CMO of Supplyframe.
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