Ask 100 people on the street today if they know the historical significance of June 6th and it wouldn’t surprise me if none of them know (especially if they’re under 50 years old).
It’s D-Day, when Allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy (the largest amphibious landing in history), which was a turning point in World War II.
“A nation that forgets its past has no future,” said Winston Churchill.
And Pearl S. Buck said, “If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday.”
Who is Winston Churchill, you ask, or Pearl S. Buck?
Never mind, I say, help yourself to a donut — today is June 6th, National Donut Day.
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Moving on, here’s the supply chain and logistics news that caught my attention this week:
- The Trump administration just doubled the tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. Here’s what that means (CNN)
- Tariffs prompt record plunge in US imports (BBC)
- US retail giants pushing Chinese suppliers to shoulder up to 66% of tariff costs (South China Morning Post)
- Automakers Race to Find Workaround to China’s Stranglehold on Rare-Earth Magnets (WSJ – sub. req’d)
- CSCMP State of Logistics Report: Logistics industry still navigating through the fog (Logistics Management)
- Amazon ‘testing humanoid robots to deliver packages’ (The Guardian)
- Descartes Announces Fiscal 2026 First Quarter Financial Results
- LuminX Secures $5.5M to Revolutionize Warehouse Operations with Vision Language Models (VLMs) on the Edge
- CVSA to Enforce English Tests for Truck Drivers Starting June 25 (Transport Topics)
- Red Sea marine traffic up 60% after Houthis narrowed targets, EU commander says (Reuters)
- Northern Europe port congestion to last until at least August (Lloyd’s List)
Episode 137 of “Days of our Tariffs”
The headlines today are about the end of the Trump-Elon Musk bromance, but that is a different soap opera. The one about tariffs had yet another plot twist this week: the doubling of tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to 50%.
Aside from US steel companies, few are happy about this tariff increase. As Chris Isidore writes in CNN, “The leap in tariffs likely won’t hit American pocketbooks immediately – but experts say that higher prices on construction projects, car lots, appliances and elsewhere are all but inevitable from the higher duties. And while the tariffs could protect steel manufacturing jobs, they could hurt employment in much larger industries.”
Meanwhile, on the retail front, South China Morning Post reports that “American retail giants are now demanding that their Chinese suppliers shoulder half to 66 per cent of the cost of US import duties, as the ongoing US-China trade war ramps up pressure on businesses’ bottom lines, industry sources told the Post.” Here’s more from the article:
Walmart and other major US retail groups previously agreed to bear the full cost of the tariffs when they asked their Chinese suppliers to resume shipments in late April, industry sources told the Post at the time.
But global brands including several US retail giants are now pushing suppliers in both China and parts of Southeast Asia to absorb a large chunk of the cost of the levies, according to sources from suppliers serving companies including Walmart, Target, Nike, Puma and Adidas.
Last October, we asked our Indago supply chain research community — who are all supply chain and logistics executives from manufacturing, retail, and distribution companies — “Assuming your supply chain costs will increase due to new or larger tariffs, what actions will you take (or have you taken in the past) to mitigate the impact?”
Topping the list of actions was “We will pass some of the cost increases to customers,” which was selected by 52% of the respondents. It was followed by “We will source from suppliers in other countries” (48%) and “We will look to save costs elsewhere, like in transportation” (44%). The approach of trying to get suppliers to cut their prices ranked low on the list.
At the end of the day, somebody has to pay the higher costs, and it looks like we’ve reached the point where every option — from getting customers to pay more to getting suppliers to lower their prices — is on the table.
There’s A Humanoid Robot at My Doorstep
In a recent Wall Street Journal article titled, “Humanoid Robots Finally Get Real Jobs,” Christopher Mims writes, “As global demand for new kinds of robots has shot up, mass manufacturing and falling costs for components are making [humanoid robots] cheaper to produce. Just as important, new kinds of AI — some close kin to the kind that has upended the priorities of tech companies and governments since the debut of ChatGPT — are animating robot bodies in ways that simply weren’t possible even a few years ago.”
Based on a survey we conducted with our Indago supply chain community this past March, most companies have no interest in using humaid robots in their logistics operations at this time (see “Humaid Robots in Logistics” report, available to Indago members). But Amazon isn’t like most companies.
“Amazon is reportedly developing software for humanoid robots that could perform the role of delivery workers and ‘spring out’ of its vans,” according to The Guardian, based on a report by The Information. Here are some excerpts from the article:
[Amazon] is building a “humanoid park” in the US to test the robots, said the tech news site the Information, citing a person who had been involved in the project.
The Information reported that the robots could eventually take the jobs of delivery workers. It is developing the artificial intelligence software that would power the robots but will use hardware developed by other companies.
The indoor obstacle course being used for the tests at an Amazon office in San Francisco is about the size of a coffee shop, the report said, with the company hoping the robots will be able to travel in Amazon’s Rivian vans and make deliveries from them.
Of course, some ideas never quite make it — or maybe they are too far ahead of their time.
Remember the Vision Van concept unveiled by Mercedes-Benz and Matternet in 2016? As I wrote at the time, the Vision Van combined an electric van with a fully automated cargo space, drones, joystick control, and cloud-based algorithms to control order picking, the loading of packages, the automated cargo space, and route planning for the vehicle and delivery drones.
In short, the delivery van employed drones to assist with last-mile parcel delivery. I haven’t seen any Vision Vans in my neighborhood. Have you? The press release doesn’t appear on Daimler’s website anymore either.
(The Ukrainians, however, seemed to have been inspired by the idea with their recent drone attack on Russian warplanes, which apparently involved drones deployed from containers on trucks. So, maybe the idea is better for warfare than for parcel delivery.)
So, maybe this Amazon news is a big deal — or maybe it’s not. Time will tell.
Regardless, robots and AI are encroaching on just about every job out there, blue and white collar alike. That is why Bill Gates said earlier this year that within 10 years, we will be down to 2-day workweeks.
Is this really a good thing?
Be careful what we ask for, is all I’m saying.
And with that, have a meaningful weekend!
Song of the Week: “Turning Japanese” by The Vapors
