May 16, 2025- After the November 2024 election, LogicSource, a sourcing and procurement firm focused on indirect and non-clinical spend management, received a surge of calls from customers. With tariffs a key part of President Trump’s platform, clients were anxious to understand the potential impact on costs, including packaging, construction, and hardware.
“We knew tariffs were, at the very least, going to be used as negotiation leverage to drive policy, and at the most going to be used to bring manufacturing back into the U.S.,” said James Bouchard, associate partner, Center of Excellence at LogicSource. “But from November to early December, it wasn’t clear what the administration was planning and what we should expect relative to product-specific and country-specific tariffs.”
To prepare, LogicSource began laying the foundation for a reporting structure. It started with preliminary information provided by the Trump administration on country-specific tariffs for Mexico, Canada and China.
Then, LogicSource conducted an internal deep dive into the products its customers bought that were either directly imported from those countries or made up of raw materials imported from them. LogicSource also pooled information from external sources, including media outlets and government websites. The team created a tariff forecast, predicting impacts and price increases if the tariffs took effect as the administration was proposing.
“That is how we came up with an initial list of products that we expect to be impacted by these tariffs if they came into play,” Bouchard said.
In an interview with Repertoire Magazine, Bouchard shared some initial insights into how the tariffs already affected markets this spring – including healthcare – and potential long-term implications.
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