Recent momentum toward a U.S.–India trade agreement highlights how rapidly trade policy and tariffs can reshape global supply chains and supply chain risk exposure. With tariffs falling from levels as high as 50 percent to approximately 18 percent, alongside broader market access commitments, the framework is poised to affect sourcing strategies, supplier cost structures, and cross-border trade volumes across a range of industries.
According to the White House, India intends to significantly increase its imports of U.S. goods, with planned purchases exceeding $500 billion across sectors including energy, information and communications technology, coal, and other products.
Strategic implications for global enterprises
For global enterprises, this development reinforces a critical reality. Tariffs now function as signals of structural change, reshaping supplier competitiveness, total landed cost calculations, and global supply chain risk exposure.
As Kamal Ahluwalia, CEO of Resilinc and board member of the U.S.–India Business Council, noted, “This agreement fundamentally resets the economics of sourcing from India. Companies that have been locked into China-centric supply chains now have a viable alternative with comparable scale, but they need to act while the tariff advantage is fresh.”
Why tariff changes matter now
Shifts in tariff policy can immediately alter supplier cost structures and competitive positioning. In the case of the U.S.–India agreement, reduced tariffs are likely to have the most immediate impact across several key product categories that are deeply embedded in global supply networks:
- Critical infrastructure and industrial inputs, including energy, metals, technology components, and advanced manufacturing materials
- High-volume manufactured goods, such as textiles, consumer products, and industrial goods where tariff shifts create immediate margin pressure and accelerate sourcing decisions
- Agricultural and food commodities, where duty changes directly affect pricing, availability, and trade flow patterns across seasonal supply cycles
As these categories become more cost-competitive, organizations may reevaluate sourcing strategies, often rapidly and at scale.
How tariffs amplify risk in multi-tier supply chains
The tariff impact on global supply chains rarely occurs in isolation. Trade policy changes often intersect with other pressures, including energy market volatility, regulatory shifts, climate disruption, and supplier financial stress.
When tariffs shift, they can amplify existing vulnerabilities deep within multi-tier supplier networks, particularly where organizations lack visibility beyond tier-one suppliers.
Ahluwalia added, “The real impact of tariff changes often emerges three, four, even five tiers deep, where most companies have zero visibility. By the time costs surface at the tier-one level, you’re already behind.”
Turning tariff volatility into actionable insight
Managing tariff-driven change requires more than monitoring policy announcements. It requires continuously interpreting policy shifts, assessing downstream exposure, and translating change into operational and financial insight across the supply chain.
Purpose-built, agentic approaches, such as Resilinc’s Tariffs Agent, enable organizations to move beyond awareness to action. By connecting trade policy intelligence with supplier and material risk data, companies can.
- Identify which suppliers, materials, and regions are exposed to tariff changes
- Model potential cost and risk impacts across multi-tier supply chains
- Evaluate alternative sourcing scenarios before disruption occurs
- Continuously track tariff changes as agreements evolve from announcement to enforcement
Looking ahead
The U.S.–India trade agreement reflects a broader shift toward a more fluid and less predictable trade environment. Tariff changes are occurring with greater frequency and are often accompanied by downstream effects that extend well beyond initial cost considerations, intensifying the impact on global supply chains.
As tariff volatility accelerates, organizations seeking competitive advantage will increasingly depend on agentic AI systems that actively model downstream impacts, surface hidden multi-tier exposures, and orchestrate coordinated responses across increasingly complex global supply networks.
