Tariffs are here to stay

From the November 2025 edition of Supply Chain Management Review.

November 2025

The November 2025 issue of Supply Chain Management Review explores the topics of global supply chain resilience, innovation leadership, and data-driven transformation. Highlights include strategies for building…

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For decades, business leaders largely assumed that globalization and free trade would steadily reduce barriers. Tariffs were seen as temporary political tools, usually negotiated away over time. That assumption is gone. Tariffs are no longer a short-term disruption. They are becoming a structural part of supply chains and cost structures, and executives need to plan accordingly.

At the recent ASCM CHAINge conference, former U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo underscored the reality that tariffs are not a passing phenomenon, but are more likely to become a structural part of your cost structure moving forward.

“It is chaotic and the reason it’s chaotic is because you don’t know what’s going to come next,” she said during her keynote address. “I wish I could tell you it was going to settle down, but because of the politics, which are driving this disruptive atmosphere again on both sides of the aisle, I think we’re in this disruption for a while. And so my best thought to you is fasten your seatbelt. Don’t assume things are going to calm down and make your contingency plans accordingly.”

The concept of planning accordingly is not new, but something Raimondo said struck me, and I’m assuming many in the audience, differently. Tariffs aren’t going away.

“Once the tariff is levied, it is hard to take it away,” she said, pointing to her experience under the Biden administration and unsuccessfully arguing to reduce or eliminate tariffs put in place during the first Trump administration. “I’m not saying it never goes away, but I argued with President Biden … I was unsuccessful. President Biden wouldn’t do it. No one wants to be the guy that reduces the tariff and is then susceptible to the criticism that we’re going to lose manufacturing jobs in the U.S.”

In other words, even leaders who favor reducing tariffs often find themselves constrained. The political symbolism of tariffs—equating them with protecting jobs—makes it almost impossible to roll them back. Plus, there is the revenue factor. We still don’t know where the current tranche of Trump tariffs will ultimately end up, but what we do know is that there is some not-insignificant amount of revenue pouring into the government coffers because of them. We can argue over who is paying that—importers, exporters, or consumers—but the revenue is real.

For supply chain leaders, the implications are clear. Tariffs are not a passing storm to be weathered. They are becoming embedded in the operating environment, shaping sourcing decisions, cost models, and competitive strategy. As Raimondo noted: “Don’t assume things are going to calm down.”

That is the mindset companies must now adopt. The sooner executives accept tariffs as a permanent feature of global trade, the better prepared they will be to build resilient, adaptive supply chains that can thrive in a tariff-defined world. Like them or hate them. It’s time to manage them.

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