How to Proactively Defend Against Supply Chain Risks from Section 232 and 301 Tariffs

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U.S.-中国贸易战争的升级为数十亿美元的中国进口关税 - 但成千上万的中国产品即将下降额外职责。

Off the back of the Trump administration's Section 232 investigation, which resulted in steel and aluminum tariffs, the recently finalized Section 301 investigation has targeted numerous Chinese products. Many procurement organizations have been following the investigation and its potential effects on their supply chains, but knowing exactly how a decision could introduce risk on a part, supplier and regional level has been far from easy.

To shield their businesses from uncertain trade risks, procurement organizations need to take a proactive approach. This requires functional leaders to be able to quickly and comprehensively visualize their supply chains, enabling them to measure risk at all levels and make preventative decisions with both efficiency and accuracy. In this article, we explore how procurement organizations can do just that, along with how supply chain risk management tools can facilitate this process for current and future trade risks.

映射供应链

Before procurement organizations can fully assess and plan for the full impact of tariffs, they will need to map all of their supply chain data. This first step provides a full picture of how parts and materials travel from their country of origin to the business, creating a foundation off of which to perform risk analysis and develop mitigation strategies.

大多数组织了解这种能力的重要性，但它们也很难实现它。在2017年GEODIS调查中，623家公司，受访者将供应链可见性提升为其业务的第三个最重要的优先事项，落后于完全交付和产品可用性。然而，只有6％的受访者表示，他们的供应链完全可见。

Narrowing this gap between the acknowledged need for visibility and current capability is easier said than done. The imperative for doing so now, however, is clear: Companies that cannot trace their parts and materials from country of origin to factory risk being caught off guard when the next round of tariffs raises costs or jeopardizes availability of a single-sourced good.

获得供应链可见性的最快方法是旨在争取专门从事该领域的软件提供商的帮助。Resilinc的风险屏幕产品那for example, enables procurement organizations to visualize their end-to-end supply chains through geographic maps and network graphs. By loading supplier and purchase data into a centralized platform, RiskShield consolidates supply chain data (e.g., part-site mapping, recovery times, alternate sites, risk assessment surveys) from not only tier 1 suppliers but also suppliers several tiers below. This allows companies to consolidate siloed corporate data, creating a single version of the truth about a business’ risk exposure.

分析关税风险

Once procurement organizations have taken the first step to fixing their visibility problems, they can begin to compare risks across suppliers, sites and parts as they relate to potential tariff-related products.

There are numerous criteria to consider when conducting these analyses. At a basic level, procurement organizations should begin by looking into four categories:

Supplier/Company： Financial stability (e.g., bankruptcy) 创新潜力 Operational capabilities 供应商网站的灾难 材料和服务可用性 价格上涨 环境稳定性 Quality Delivery Regulatory/legal Brand/reputa-tion (e.g., a PR meltdown)

Location: 当地活动 内乱 恐怖主义 Strikes Natural hazards

国家特定的： Financial stability (e.g., country rating, GDP, unemployment rate) Pandemic outbreaks 政治事件/情况 Corruption, bribery Labor costs Currency fluctuations

其他： Freight status (e.g., temperature, pressure, shocks) Industry-specific risks

上表并不意味着代表公司供应链中的潜在风险的详尽列表;相反，它是其中更详细的分析的起点可以是基于的。在关税的背景下，某些风险因素将获得比其他风险更高的重点，例如供应商稳定（金融和运营），货币波动和材料或产品可用性。

随着该重点缩小，组织可以开始比较各种产品，供应商，场地和零件的风险暴露。工具喜欢重新纳’s RiskShieldallow procurement and cross-functional partners to create customized risk profiles for all of these various levels, using an unlimited number of risk indices (e.g., financial, reputational, disaster, geopolitical) to define custom weightings and tolerance limits for specific risks.

创建一个戏剧书

With both improved visibility and risk insights in hand, organizations can now move on to the most critical step of a proactive tariff mitigation plan: creating a playbook of risk prevention and mitigation strategies.

映射供应链组成和评估潜在影响的目标是提前为风险事件做好准备。关于关税，这意味着作为政府发布潜在关税的清单，组织应该能够将名为商品与其材料和产品列表进行比较，以选择替代解决方案（例如，根据需要第二个供应商）。

To begin developing your tariff risk playbook, consider the answers to questions such as:

• What are all of the risk factors that need to be monitored, and how are we planning to mitigate them should events arise?
• What are the measurable risk thresholds (e.g., price increases) that need to be defined?
• 我们的供应链中的关键故障点是什么，以及这些概念在发生中断时如何减轻？
• 我们的供应商合同是否具有必要的语言（例如，不可抗力的条款）来解决贸易风险或其他中断？
• 内部资源是否具有所需的信息和可见性（例如，供应商联系信息），以便在出现时快速处理风险？
• 在风险事件发生之前，之前和之后，我们需要评估的主要指标是什么？
• How could a risk event affect sourcing, supplier network and product development in the future?

These questions, while not exhaustive, should illustrate the type of thinking that goes into developing a tariff risk playbook. The idea is to compile all of the information from the first two steps and then prioritize risk mitigation activities. And whencodified in a risk management solution那risk mitigation can be easily tracked and managed through dedicated workflows, allowing procurement organizations to watch risk reduce in real time as projects are completed.

What’s more, developing a risk mitigation playbook can help businesses prepare for not just the impact of new tariffs but also other unforeseen risks on the horizon. Consider it a long-term investment in procurement’s value contribution to the business. In重新纳例如，客户已发现全面的供应链弹性计划可以节省高达1500万美元的年销售额。

But if there were one lesson to take away from this guide, it would be this: start planning for trade risks today. Only by proactively identifying, analyzing and mitigating supply chain risks can procurement organizations attain the compelling value that such resiliency programs advertise.

This article was written on behalf of重新纳由花费重要品牌工作室团队，而不是由花费重要的社论或分析师团队。