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If the product can wait, the options widen. A cost and storage evaluation tells you whether to hold it until the rate comes down. You can move the production planning instead, stopping the line because there is enough in stock to deliver, then restart a few months later.
For example, new markets emerge when a tariff in one country has a huge impact on revenue and creates an opportunity for a market to surface that isn’ t affected by increased duties. Or it goes into a foreigntrade zone, where it sits until it’ s needed, and duty is paid only on what comes out.
Which of those options applies to a particular company depends on how critical the product is. When it’ s needed makes a difference too, as do whether it can be stored, and whether other markets exist for it. Those are agility decisions, and they only work when the answers are already sitting there before the question arrives. Holding that data is what an orchestration layer is for.
We run our own supply chain on the same logic. For ocean freight, we collect the requirement from each of our manufacturing sites for the coming months- or for a full year, when forecasts allow- then launch requests for proposal, locking space and pricing ahead of time. We stay out of the spot market, where reliability is a question and last-minute pricing is expensive. Instead, our sites get a consistent delivery timeline at a price that was forecast and financially planned for in advance.
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