The Trump Tariff Effect on Your Supply Chain

Will tariffs be the 2025 Supply Chain Management buzzword? 

There’s a good chance it will be.

While the emphasis in the news is on the unpredictability and the effects on prices and inflation, the impact on inbound B2B supply chains hardly makes the news, even though it’s equally relevant.

9 Billion Euros at stake 

Through the Quyntess Business Network, we process billions of Euros of B2B spend, including cross-border purchases of raw materials, components, and sub-assemblies for large multinational manufacturing companies in discrete manufacturing and consumer packaged goods. 

How do the Trump tariffs, as well as the reciprocal retaliation tariffs of other countries, impact the supply chains of our customers, and how can we help them?  

We measured the impact of global procurement within our network, spanning 58 countries — 46% of that volume is cross-border. The easy, though still interesting part of our job is calculating the impact of tariffs and performing a what-if analysis on product cost impact by simulating various tariff scenarios to measure the impact and identify key pain points.  

1300 supplier relationships are at risk

How can companies act on these insights within their business network? 

There are 2 main scenarios: Re-shoring and multi-sourcing. 

Re-shoring plays into the MAGA mantra: Tariffs must force companies to buy local and stimulate the domestic economy. Putting aside the question of how feasible this is for certain products, our Business Network is an asset to scout alternative suppliers that are ready to transact. 

Our network is fully multi-tenant, which means that each supplier has their information in their own account, but this also allows them to connect to multiple buyers.  

With our Planner Workbench app, it is possible to pivot demand to alternative suppliers, invite them to a mini-RFQ containing real purchase requisitions, and therefore quickly qualify them before you complete further onboarding steps.  

The multi-sourcing scenario is an interesting scenario for companies that already have manufacturing capability on several continents. 

What we see regularly is that our OEM and Tier 1 customers have implemented strategies where they assemble end products close to the customer and manufacture a certain part of the components locally, for various reasons. 

Due to economies of scale and specialisation, they have typically chosen to source specific sub-assemblies from a single plant in their network and share these with other factories in the group, which in turn specialise in other specific sub-assemblies again.  

Putting local strategies to work

As a group, these companies are well-positioned to isolate themselves from the effects of tariffs, however, the impact of a tariff on such a sub-assembly can outweigh the economies of scale of centralised manufacturing. In practice, we see that more and more sub-assemblies are being produced closer to where the final product is assembled, following a “local for local” supply chain strategy.

The Quyntess Business Network and the Planner Workbench App support sourcing and planning teams in a practical way. Helping them scout alternative suppliers or shift demand for parts within sub-assemblies to connected suppliers that are already delivering to that facility. 

Resilience beyond tariffs

What if this whole tariff issue is short-lived and blows over in six months?

Even if that is the case, geopolitical stability is not expected to return to normal. Multinational companies will need to prepare for more frequent reconfigurations of their supply chain. Such changes put a lot of pressure on scarce sourcing and planning staff. Without a ready-to-transact business network, this becomes a tedious task. 

A smarter way forward

Schedule a meeting with our team of consultants, including me. We've supported many customers in this situation and offer the tools to move from uncertainty to action. 

I want to learn how I can connect my first 200 suppliers within 90 days!