As tariff policy shifts scrambled the sourcing picture last year, supply chain de-risking became both unavoidable and increasingly complex for many furniture importers.
With each new tariff announcement — and each subsequent deal, pause or exemption — businesses were forced to decide whether and how to respond. For executives navigating that uncertainty, reliable data has become an essential tool.
Jackson Wood, director of industry strategy for global trade intelligence at Descartes, told sister pub Furniture Today that actionable trade data can help demystify supply chain shifts, giving importers a clearer view of shifting sourcing trends and global trade flows.
China’s future uncertain
Supply chain shifts away from China accelerated following President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcements last year, prompting many importers to reassess long-standing sourcing relationships.
Wood cautioned against drawing firm conclusions about China’s long-term trajectory.
“I think that it’s difficult to say how persistent any of the shifts away from China that we have seen are actually going to be,” he said. “When you sort of zoom out and contemplate the nature of the United States’ relationship with China — both from a geopolitical perspective as well as from a commercial perspective — these two countries are so intertwined and interdependent that it’s really hard to say how structural any of these changes are going to be.”
This volatility, he added, is likely here to stay.
“I think there’s going to be continued volatility, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we were having this conversation a year or two from now and saying, ‘The U.S. has never been importing more products from China than they are today,’” he said.
Even amid diversification efforts, China’s role in global manufacturing remains deeply embedded.
“I think that any reports of China’s demise have been really exaggerated,” Wood said. “But the degree of complexity that exists in the China relationship is such that figuring out what interventions or what non-interventions are going to tip the scales in one way, shape or form is pretty much impossible to predict.”
Rising stars, for now?
As China volumes softened, countries such as India and Vietnam saw trade activity tick up, particularly in sectors like furniture.
Wood sounded a note of caution against overinterpreting those gains.
“How much of the capacity and the capability that exists in each of those countries is truly native capacity versus how much of it is as a result of potentially relationships that exist with Chinese companies?” he asked.
Data does show substitution patterns emerging.
“We did notice some volume trends where some of the episodes of declines in China would quite clearly be mirrored in an increase in exports from Vietnam or from India,” he said.
Whether those shifts represent durable structural change remains unclear.
“Just disentangling the sustainability or the durability of either of those countries as suitable alternatives to China — I think that’s a story that’s still being written,” Wood added.
India, in particular, presents opportunity, with caveats.
“I do think that there is a lot of runway for companies to be able to really tap into India as a source,” he noted. “The one thing that does play against India a little bit is just proximity. It’s going to be farther sailings to get products from India into the United States.”
As those countries build manufacturing and logistics infrastructure to support increased demand, scalability becomes a central question.
“Will they be able to keep up with demand? Will they be able to build infrastructure at the same pace, at the same scale that China has been able to build? Early returns are promising,” he said.
Transshipping realities, risks
Another complicating factor in global trade discussions is transshipping: routing goods through intermediary countries to obscure origin and potentially avoid tariffs.
“By definition, parties to a transshipment are trying to obfuscate the fact that it’s a transshipment,” Wood said.
“There’s no good evidence that’s available publicly to be able to validate those claims,” he said. “Any true data is going to simply be in the hands of the investigators who are making those determinations.”
While Wood characterized some political rhetoric around the issue as overstated, companies are responding cautiously.
“It’s a very opportunistic rhetorical device for the administration to talk about transshipping as a huge challenge,” he said. “Our customers are taking it very seriously and beginning to strengthen some of their internal procedures around documentation, attestations from shippers, etc.”
For furniture importers, diversification remains a key component of de-risking, however difficult or uncertain the picture might be at any given time.
“Supply chain diversification is easy to say and very hard to do,” Wood said. “There are no guarantees that you’re going to find viable replacements (for sourcing). On the other side of the coin, it’s just as much, if not more, of a risk to do nothing.”
In some cases, companies may choose to renegotiate rather than relocate sourcing.
“If that means renegotiating, instead of diversifying away from a high-risk jurisdiction or supplier, (some firms are) negotiating different commercial terms to try to make things more sustainable,” he said.
Ultimately, the greater risk may be underestimating volatility and taking a “wait and see” approach rather than undertaking data-baked decision making.
“Are we taking this volatility seriously? Or are we expecting it to just pass like bad weather? I do think that that is a significant risk that organizations need to wrap their heads around,” Wood said.
Building resilience does not necessarily require wholesale transformation, but it does require preparation.
“Maybe you don’t have to do everything, but you need to be putting the right people or the right tooling in place to say, we need to have resilient capability with respect to how our supply chain works,” he said.
“Whether it’s because of a tariff, whether it’s because of some other geopolitical posturing, (companies) need some options to flex across their supply chain to navigate those things accordingly.”
