Two things can be true at the same time: The first three months of 2025 have flown by, and they have felt like an eternity, especially for global trade management professionals.
The “Word of the Year” for 2025 is already settled: “tariffs” (or “Trump Tariffs,” if adjectives are allowed).
Will AI make a comeback later in the year? Maybe, but for now, it’s all tariffs, tariffs, tariffs, baby!
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” said Mark Twain. If so, the 2020s are starting to rhyme with the 1930s — when you couple this trade war with the rise of anti-semitism, the rise of nationalism, and growing military conflicts and threats around the world (e.g., Russia-Ukraine, Iran and the Middle East, China-Taiwan). I hope and pray that what happened next in the last century doesn’t happen again in this one. It would be nothing but a tragedy.
Although tariffs have sucked the oxygen out of everything else happening in the supply chain and logistics realm, change and innovation continue in the industry. Check out some of the topics featured in the top Talking Logistics posts and Indago research reports listed below: driverless trucks, supply chain visibility, freight fraud, congestion pricing, humanoid robots, carrier networks, labor constraints, and more!
Finally, these past three months have reinforced my strong belief that many of the problems that persist in supply chain management today boil down to a lack of trust between people, functional groups, and trading partners — and because every company continues to look out only for itself instead of taking a truly collaborative approach focused on creating shared value across their supply chain network.
In short, it’s well past time for companies to rethink business relationships in supply management. I will be discussing this topic with Kate Vitasek, faculty member at the University of Tennessee and architect of the Vested Business Model, this coming Wednesday, April 16 at 2:00 pm ET. Sign up via this link to join this timely and important conversation!
In the meantime, here are some Talking Logistics and Indago highlights for Q1 2025.
The Quarter in Review
In case you missed them the first time around or want to read/view them again, check out the top posts and new episodes from the first quarter of 2025. After reading/watching them, share this post with your colleagues and social media followers, then post a comment and share your perspective on these topics!
Top Posts
- The Long, Bumpy Road to Deploying Driverless Trucks at Scale
- The Future (or End) of Supply Chain Visibility
- Navigating NYC Congestion Pricing: The Impact on Distribution Operations
- The Transportation Management Agenda in 2025: Innovate or Execute Better?
- Combating Fraud in the Freight Industry
- Freight Forwarders and Real-time Freight Visibility
- Crisis, Chaos, and the Road Ahead: The New Era of Supply Chains
- Some Supply Chain Lessons Are Never Learned
- The Logistics of the De Minimis Entry
- Logistics Benefits via Improved Packaging
New Episodes
- Crisis, Chaos, And The Road Ahead: The New Era Of Supply Chains
- Combating Fraud in the Freight Industry
Indago Research Reports
This quarter we completed eight research surveys and donated a total of $675 to Breakthrough T1D, American Logistics Aid Network, American Cancer Society, Feeding America, and Make-A-Wish.
- Revisiting Inbound Logistics (March 2025): Inbound logistics plays a critical role in supply chain efficiency, cost control, and operational resilience. How would you rate your overall inbound logistics processes? What are your biggest inbound logistics challenges? What actions are you taking to improve your inbound logistics operations?
- Humanoid Robots in Logistics (March 2025): Are you using (or plan to use) humanoid robots in your logistics operations? What do you see as the biggest potential benefits of using humanoid robots? The biggest challenges or barriers?
- Is Visibility a Product or Feature? (March 2025): Do you currently use a real-time transportation visibility solution? Which side of the debate are you on? What are the biggest challenges or limitations with real-time transportation visibility solutions today?
- The Value of Trucking Carrier Networks (March 2025): An open trucking carrier network is an online platform that connects shippers with a large, diverse community of trucking companies and freight brokers. Instead of making and maintaining many one-to-one connections with carriers and freight brokers, a shipper makes a single connection to the network to transact with their existing carriers/brokers, as well as to discover and onboard new ones.
- Trump Tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China (February 2025): The Trump administration announced 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, and 10% on goods from China. Assuming these tariffs are implemented and last for several weeks or months, how much of an impact will they have on your supply chain operations? Which country affected by the tariffs is the most critical to your supply chain? How confident are you in your company’s ability to adapt to these trade policy changes?
- Expectations for Trucking Rates and Capacity in 2025 (February 2025): What are your expectations for trucking rates and volumes in 2025? What actions do you plan to take this year to better manage or control your transportation spend? What are you communicating to your C-level executives about what to expect in 2025 with transportation?
- Pulse on Supply Chain Planning (January 2025): Which supply chain planning solutions do you use? How accurate are your demand and supply forecasts? What are the most significant obstacles you face in supply chain planning?
- Supply Chain & Logistics Labor Shortage (January 2025): How challenging is it to find and hire qualified people to fill your open supply chain and logistics positions? What do you believe are the primary causes of the labor shortages? What strategies is your organizing using to address this problem?
If you’re a supply chain or logistics practitioner from a manufacturing, retail, or distribution company, I encourage you to learn more about Indago and join our research community. It is confidential, there is no cost to join and the time commitment is minimal (2-4 minutes per week) — plus your participation will help support charitable causes that need our help today more than ever.
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