Taking an agentic approach to tariffs

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Taking an agentic approach to tariffs

  • Taking an agentic approach to tariffs
3 Minuto de lectura

If you’re having trouble keeping track of the constant changes in U.S. import tariffs, we’re not here to judge you. It’s a confusing time for any company operating a global supply chain. Under the Trump Administration, tariffs are constantly being created, rescinded, updated, and reinstated in a dizzying whirl. There are a lot of new tariffs to track, and many nuances to each new tariff announcement.

Some imports from Canada and Mexico are protected by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Many are not. Let’s not even get started on the complexities surrounding steel import tariffs, as well as trade policies that are specific to the automotive industry. Suffice it to say that, on any given day, it might not be clear which of your products, orders and suppliers are actually subject to tariffs.

It’s tough, if not impossible, to procure components and products, manage supplier networks, and move inventory—with consistent profitability—under these conditions. The fast-changing, dynamic and highly nuanced nature of tariffs in 2025 exceeds human cognition, manual analysis and static planning cycles. And it’s not enough to merely flag a new tariff. Your organization must also figure out all the impacts, upstream and downstream, and choose the right response.

Over the longer term, if the current tariffs stick, you may want to rethink your network model, shift to nearshoring, rationalize your suppliers, and take other strategic actions. But for now, two central questions are top-of-mind: How are tariffs affecting my business today? And what can I do about it today? 

Meet Blue Yonder Tariff Agent, your new in-house expert

At Blue Yonder, we’re constantly listening to customers, observing their supply chain challenges and arriving at groundbreaking innovations in response. That’s why we’ve developed our new agentic AI application, Tariff Agent.

What’s an AI agent? It’s software infused with AI that can pursue a goal on its user’s behalf, gathering information, analyzing it, providing recommendations, and even making decisions and executing them. At Blue Yonder, our AI agents are built to focus on very specific supply chain challenges—like tariffs. While Blue Yonder has broad, proven AI capabilities that span just about every supply chain capability, our AI agents are focused, hands-on and task-oriented.

Tariff Agent is a highly trained specialist with a single mission: It applies AI, analytics, and the latest tariff information to help you achieve the best possible supply chain outcomes, based on how tariffs are affecting your company right now.

Think of the Tariff Agent as a new expert on your team that sits beside your human planners and analysts, but far exceeds their cognitive capabilities and speed. Unlike traditional trade compliance tools, the Tariff Agent doesn't just track tariffs. It autonomously ingests huge volumes of policy and supply chain data and translates them into actionable sourcing and fulfillment strategies across your supply chain—all in mere seconds.

Our Tariff Agent won’t replace your team, but it will make their work more confident and more accurate. You’ll achieve more certain, more predictable outcomes, even in the face of tariffs that are here today, gone tomorrow.

Practical, actionable recommendations, based on current data

How exactly does the Tariff Agent work? It sources current tariff data from the United States International Trade Commission, including the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, which defines duty rates and statistical categories for all merchandise imported into the U.S.

Based on your supply chain data, it then calculates your specific tariff exposure by item, supplier, order, commodity, and country of origin in near real time. It scans your transaction data—including in-transit shipments, pre-transit shipments and planned purchase orders—highlighting critical tariff risks such as single-sourced products. It also intelligently defines those products that are protected from tariffs by USMCA and other agreements.

In just seconds, the Tariff Agent makes practical recommendations that actively reduce tariff impacts. These recommendations might include:

•    Switching to alternate sources of supply
•    Moving out of high-tariff trade lanes and countries of origin
•    Reprioritizing purchase orders and otherwise rethinking sourcing plans

Tariff Agent focuses on short-term, actionable insights. But it also prepares your planners and financial analysts to think about longer-term strategies, by providing granular details on your tariff exposure by supplier, product category or country.

Across sourcing, manufacturing, inventory optimization, and logistics, your planners and analysts can query the Tariff Agent and receive on-demand insights and recommendations that are relevant to their own function.

This powerful AI agent provides you with an always-on, 24-7 source of facts and guidance related specifically to tariffs. It’s fast to launch and far more cost-effective than hiring internal staff or external consultants, while delivering more rapid, higher-quality insights.

In all its analysis and recommendations, the Tariff Agent is trained to balance strict compliance with cost mitigation and high service levels. In seconds, it makes sophisticated trade-offs that would take human analysts weeks—and it’s likely that tariff details would change by then. As tariff patterns and sourcing behaviors evolve, the agent learns from decisions and planner feedback, refining its recommendations over time.

Why it works: Built on a future-ready AI platform

The Tariff Agent is more than just a smart assistant—it’s part of a broader ecosystem of intelligent, adaptive solutions built on the Blue Yonder Platform. It benefits from the same powerful foundation that underpins all our agentic AI innovations:

•    Grounded on unified data across planning, execution, and network, seamlessly integrated through Snowflake
•    Built on Azure AI Foundry, using both foundation and fine-tuned language models alongside advanced ML models
•    Designed for trust, with embedded ethical AI, role-based access controls, and transparent decisioning
•    Collaborative, context-aware, and memory-enabled, allowing agents to learn, adapt, and improve continuously

Because it’s part of the Blue Yonder agentic ecosystem, the Tariff Agent can be connected to other agents such as Inventory Ops, Warehouse Ops or Logistics Ops. This means tariff insights can trigger real-time sourcing shifts, inform supplier scorecards, reprioritize POs, or re-optimize inbound routing in sync with your broader supply chain goals.
 

Don’t scramble to keep up. Stay ahead with Tariff Agent.

As supply chain professionals, we all know the frustration of ongoing tariff announcements and updates. Blue Yonder has developed the Tariff Agent to help you stay ahead of these constant changes—and proactively protect your cost and service results as conditions shift, and shift again.

But Tariff Agent is just one solution in Blue Yonder’s growing family of agentic AI capabilities. If you have a supply chain challenge, there’s probably a Blue Yonder AI solution for it. We also work with customers on custom-tailored AI agents through our Agent Activation Advisory.

Don’t wait to be blindsided by the next tariff announcement. Reach out to the Agent Activation Advisory to learn more about the Blue Yonder Tariff Agent, or contact us to learn more about how always-on AI agents can help you optimize your supply chain performance, no matter what the future holds.