In the face of a changing tariff environment, importers are more likely to change their trading behavior, put off launching new products and be short on the resources to pursue opportunities to bolster their business due to uncertainty, experts said at the Invest in America Summit. In turn, the potential for revenue for the U.S. government erodes as businesses make fewer investments.
The National Foreign Trade Council said its members are worried about the outstanding Section 232 investigations on industrial equipment, parts and components for robotics, medical devices, and electronics products that contain semiconductors. If the president decides to impose broad tariffs on these products, NFTC is concerned it would make American manufacturing more costly and less competitive.
Foreign ownership has become a defining compliance risk in global supply chains, and customs brokers who still focus only on products and country of origin are missing what regulators now consider the most consequential question, according to an analyst at commercial risk intelligence company Sayari.
The National Association of Manufacturers emphasized the way that importing inputs from Canada and Mexico and exporting to those markets undergirds job growth and that declining to continue USMCA as a trilateral agreement would damage businesses' health.
The Aluminum Association is calling for tighter tariff alignment and real‑time import monitoring across North America in the upcoming USMCA joint review, industry executives said April 23, arguing that current enforcement gaps leave openings for circumvention and weaken the region’s integrated aluminum supply chain.
Toronto-headquartered freight transportation provider Fastfrate Group has completed its acquisition of freight forwarder and customs brokerage firm Omnitrans, the companies recently announced.
Major express couriers recently announced initial procedures on their websites for returning refunds of International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs to their customers, just as CBP's launched the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE) refund tool in ACE April 20.
Former senior trade officials clashed over the Trump administration’s escalating tariff actions, debating whether rapid‑fire proclamations, shifting authorities and overlapping investigations are creating needed leverage or leaving companies struggling to manage supply-chain uncertainty.
DocUnlock, which automates document processing for customs clearance using artificial intelligence, is introducing a data approach that captures trade information in a format meant for CBP, said Tom Gould, of Tom Gould Customs Consulting and chief strategy and compliance officer at Gaia Dynamics, in a LinkedIn post.
Section 232 tariffs are the major concern for America's clean energy industry as producers rely on foreign inputs that are crucial for producing clean energy products like solar modules, wind turbines and storage batteries, Vanessa Sciarra, vice president for trade and international competitiveness at the American Clean Power Association, said during a March 12 event hosted by Georgetown Law’s Institute of International Economic Law.