It is now a full year since President Donald Trump announced a sweeping range of tariffs on U.S. imports, some as high as 50%. In the past 12 months, U.S. importers and manufacturers have ridden a rollercoaster of tariff rises, reductions, exemptions, and a stunning reversal from the U.S. Supreme Court, which on February 20 ruled that Trump could not invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) in order to impose tariffs. Undaunted, Trump has continued to introduce levies under different powers, many of them temporary at best, and probably illegal at worst.

In April 2025, White House advisor Peter Navarro declared that it would be possible to reach “ninety deals in ninety days.” But at the ninety-day mark, just two deals were completed, and one year on, just 17 deals have been concluded, noted Inu Manak, a senior fellow for international trade at the Council on Foreign Relations in an April 2 article.

From the get-go, U.S. industry has expressed dismay more at the ongoing uncertainty about who is actually going to pay what, than about the tariffs themselves. “Exemptions just undermine the tariffs further: If some sectors are getting relief, others could too—and why then bother trying to reshore?” said a March 31 leader in The Economist, “’Liberation Year’ has not freed American factories.” 

After decades of pursuing supply chain efficiency, U.S. companies have turned their focus to what’s politely termed “resilience,” but might better be described as redundancy -- building in backup suppliers, inventory buffers, and alternative logistics to ensure continuity during disruptions. Some of the disruptions, for sure, come from geopolitical factors such as the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine. But tariffs add an extra wobble; adding unpredictable costs, and even causing some international companies to cease supplying U.S. manufacturers and consumers entirely.

Read More: SCOTUS Ruling Likely to Cause More Tariffs, More Chaos, Experts Say

 One of Trump’s stated goals was to reverse the decline in U.S. manufacturing. But the results so far have been discouraging, according to the National Taxpayers Union. Under Liberation Day tariffs, the ratio of manufacturing workers to total nonfarm employment fell to the lowest point since 1939, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics started tracking this data. Further, the U.S. manufacturing sector shed 100,000 jobs from January 2025 to April 2026, and U.S. manufacturers hired 388,000 fewer workers in 2025 than in 2024.

According to the ISM Manufacturing Index, a monthly survey of U.S. manufacturing purchasing managers, manufacturing contracted for nine consecutive months after Liberation Day tariffs were imposed, before rebounding slightly in January and February 2026.

“Looking back, President Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs feel like they were a real moment of change in how businesses operate their supply chains,” said Simon Geale, EVP at procurement and supply chain consultancy Proxima. “We had become accustomed to a relatively stable global trade system and that had allowed companies to optimize their supply chains to focus on reducing costs. President Trump’s announcements last year and since have shown that the assumptions of a settled set of global policies can be significantly upended within a single political cycle, or even a public announcement.”

Part of the problem is that Trump has taken the unusual tack of introducing tariffs and trade deals unilaterally. “None of Trump’s trade deals have involved Congress. So not only has Congress had no role in ensuring the trade deals represent the interests of various constituencies, but the deals also lack the assurance that what is negotiated will be honored by the United States,” said Manak. “Without congressional ratification, Trump can change the deals at a whim.” 

“This creates an uncomfortable position for those working in global supply chains – they know trade policy is a live operating variable,” said Geale. “This shift in mindset is reshaping pricing, supplier economics, and capital allocation decisions in real time. We live in a world where people are thinking in terms of tolerance bands, rather than fixed assumptions. All this means that the global system is becoming less optimized for cost and more adaptive to risk. The priority is no longer just efficiency, but the ability to respond as conditions change.”

“Tariffs are no longer a temporary disruption or a negotiating tactic that supply chain leaders expect to fade,” said ISM’s Dan Zeiger in a February 3 article. “Instead, they have become a standing feature of the global business environment — complex, unpredictable and increasingly intertwined with geopolitics, productivity pressures and customer commitments.”

Don Mabry, SVP of global trade solutions at supply chain management software vendor Infios (formerly Körber Supply Chain), said, “2025 tariffs didn’t just raise costs – they rewired global trade. Unlike previous tariff events, the scale, sequencing and implementation mechanics of the 2025 policy reshaped every layer of import behavior: sourcing, routing, transportation mode, compliance, warehousing and financial structuring."

Mabry says that Infios data shows supply chain execution has shifted from a linear flow to an adaptive system, where tariff exposure is now as critical as freight, lead time and service. "Companies are going beyond simply shifting suppliers by redesigning the way they move goods through the global trade ecosystem," he said.