Tariffs are back in the headlines, causing business headaches—but they’re not the root problem. They’re a symptom of a deeper issue: enterprises are operating in a world of sustained volatility.
The past five years have hurled enterprises into a relentless storm of pandemics, geopolitical tensions, snarled supply chains, inflation spikes, and shifting regulations. Trade policy isn’t a standalone headache; it’s woven deeply into a continuous cycle of disruption. Even if tariffs haven’t yet hit many enterprises head-on, the mere shadow of trade disruption has laid bare glaring vulnerabilities: stubbornly inflexible delivery models, dangerously concentrated vendor dependencies, and woefully inadequate scenario planning.
To understand how leaders navigate these dynamics, HFS Research, in collaboration with KPMG LLP (KPMG), surveyed 402 US-based senior executives across seven major industries and conducted in-depth interviews with senior executives from Global 2000 organizations. The focus was to understand both the short and long-term impacts of trade policies on services delivery and outsourcing among major enterprises. The findings revealed that while most enterprises remain reactive, a significant minority is engaged in fundamentally re-architecting how services are delivered, governed, and protected.
This isn’t a story about tariffs—it’s about adaptation. While 69% of enterprises remain frozen or reactive, the transformative 22% are using uncertainty to restructure and gain lasting advantages. Organizations investing in real resilience today will move forward as volatility becomes the permanent backdrop to business.
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