David Warrick, EVP at Overhaul, joined Brittany Lewis on "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss court rulings on President Trump's tariffs.
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00:00And then I'm curious how you think that the court rulings impact all of this. Do you think multiple federal courts ruling that the tariffs that President Trump imposed largely are unlawful? Do you think that gives other countries more negotiating power? I mean, what do you think that really does to the ongoing negotiations?
00:17I think it was super interesting and we probably weren't paying enough attention to this smaller court who actually had this ability to make this powerful decision. What does it mean? It means that we are still in flux.
00:35So, you know, again, there's been countless articles, you know, news articles over the weekend to say, look, this is not the only way that tariffs can be imposed. There's different capabilities that the president has to be able to impose tariffs, you know, at a greater level.
00:54And so, you know, I look at this and say, OK, I think that this is due process, right? The courts have now had their opinion. That opinion was appealed. It will be appealed again. We'll go to a higher court.
01:07Hopefully it doesn't end up in the Supreme Court, but it looks like it might have to end up there. And then that will set some guardrails.
01:14Am I hopeful that those will all be very positive? I'm always I'm I'm very positive that we will get to a good place, but I worry a little bit about what that means.
01:25I worry a little bit about what does that outcome actually look like. And yet again, you know, when you when you think about what happened on Wednesday and Thursday of last week, the tariffs were on, then suddenly the tariffs were illegal and they were all off.
01:40And then the next day they were back on again for small businesses, for even for big businesses and for supply chain practitioners, really tough to navigate this current turmoil to try and make the best possible decisions.
01:54I mean, that's a really good point. What does this mean? Because I was actually in an interview, in a conversation talking about the tariffs last week when they were off and then the appeals court ruled they were on for now until June 9th.
02:09So what does that mean, do you think, for small businesses and the supply chain? Because in that 24 hour period when the tariffs were ruled, deemed unlawful, they were struck down.
02:19The Trump administration said that they were on the cusp of three trade deals and many more are on the way.
02:24Now we know the tariffs are in effect until at least June 9th. But what does this all mean for the global supply chain?
02:31For the global supply chain is it's still a little bit in crisis. And what we're trying to figure out is what is the longer term?
02:38So it's really interesting that the economic data that you're seeing over the last week has not been massively affected by tariffs.
02:48Now, there's lots of different connotations there in terms of is that just a timing issue or is there something else?
02:56But in general, global supply chains are starting to go from thinking short term to thinking medium term and thinking long term.
03:03Okay, the tariffs are going to be there in some shape or form. How do we start making decisions to enable the constant flow of goods?
03:12That is where, you know, we can't sit on the edge of our seat every single day waiting for the next decision to be implemented and then revoked.
03:22So we have to start taking a slightly longer term view on supply chain and on the economy.
03:29And what does that mean? It means getting rid of the fragility, starting to think about more about resilience.
03:36But that takes time. You know, you don't just onshore manufacturing tomorrow.
03:40You don't just change a country as an origin in terms of where you manufacture with the flick of a switch.
03:46These things take time and supply chains now have to start to become more thoughtful and also spending more time with technology.
03:55So there's a technology element of this, which is having understanding and visibility and transparency of what's in your supply chain is really important right now to allow you to make better decisions going forward.
04:09So companies are starting to actually pay more attention to that.
04:12Even in this space of eight weeks, companies have started to pay more attention to, are we really understanding our data?
04:19How do we enable ourselves to move quickly?
04:22We have to have transparency in our supply chains.
04:25We have to understand what we're deciding, what decisions we're making on what inventory and what that cost impact is going to be.