News / US shippers without full supply chain visibility are 'just asking for problems'

Question marks linger over long-term implications on global trade stemming from the Trump administration’s tariff policy, but there is mounting consensus that it has proved supply chain visibility is no longer a “nice to have”, but is now a necessity.

Testifying to this, consider the decision of the US Federal Court of International Trade, which earlier this month slapped a $3.4m fine on an importer after purported efforts to evade duties by misclassifying Chinese goods as having Thai origin.

Granting a motion for default judgement against Rayson Global – which did not answer the complaint – the court concurred with government claims that “false statements of country of origin occurred as a result of defendants’ negligence when causing the importations”.

Responding to the news on LinkedIn, the director of customs and trade services at DSV warned importers that if they were not “absolutely certain something coming from South-east Asia isn’t actually made in China, you’re just asking for problems”.

Adding that this incident showed a need to “get your house in order”, Mr Mentos’s post prompted a wave of response, including from Airbus-affiliated export control expert Olu-Kayodé Karim Amadou, who claimed full supply chain full visibility was now “not negotiable”.

While this case relates to incidents preceding the return of Donald Trump to the White House, the response builds on concerns increasingly expressed to The Loadstar that his tariff policy has thrust the complexity of global supply chains into the spotlight.

Product information management platform Pimberly’s CEO and co-founder, Martin Balaam, told The Loadstar a business’s position within a supply chain determined the level of risk the tariffs exposed it to, with those importing finished products largely safe.

Mr Balaam said the same could not be said for US manufacturing and its dependence on parts from “further down the supply chain”; its level of granularity meaning that many manufacturers “are having to look at theirs and ask, ‘where’s the impact?’”.

He added: “It has shone a light on manufacturers and left them to work out if they actually know where all their products are coming from, because it could be that the impact is hitting them two or three suppliers down the supply chain.”

Part of the problem, Mr Balaam continued, was that because of global supply chains’ granular nature, many manufacturers simply cannot say where every element of their product originated – in large part because it was a level of detail they had never needed.