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Businesses are turning to artificial intelligence tools to assist them navigate real-world turbulence in global trade.
Several tech firms told CNBC say they’re deploying the nascent technology to visualise businesses’ global supply chains — from the materials which can be used to form products, to where those goods are being shipped from — and understand how they’re affected by U.S. President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs.
Last week, Salesforce said it had developed a brand new import specialist AI agent that may “immediately process changes for all 20,000 product categories within the U.S. customs system after which take motion on them” as needed, to assist navigate changes to tariff systems.
Engineers on the U.S. software giant used the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, a 4,400-page document of tariffs on goods imported to the U.S., to tell answers generated by the agent.
“The sheer pace and complexity of worldwide tariff changes make it nearly unimaginable for many businesses to maintain up manually,” Eric Loeb, executive vp of presidency affairs at Salesforce, told CNBC. “Prior to now, corporations may need relied on small teams of in-house experts to maintain pace.”
Firms say that AI systems are enabling them to take decisions on adjustments to their global supply chains much faster.
Andrew Bell, chief product officer of supply chain management software firm Kinaxis, said that manufacturers and distributors seeking to inform their response to tariffs are using his firm’s machine learning technology to evaluate their products and the materials that go into them, in addition to external signals like news articles and macroeconomic data.
“With that information, we are able to start performing some of those simulations of, here is a specific part that’s in your construct material that has a big tariff. In the event you switched to using this other part as an alternative, what would the impact be overall?” Bell told CNBC.
‘AI’s moment to shine’
Trump’s tariffs list — which covers dozens of nations — has forced corporations to rethink their supply chains and pricing, with the likes of Walmart and Nike already raising prices on some products. The U.S. imported about $3.3 trillion of products in 2024, based on census data.
Uncertainty from the U.S. tariff measures “actually probably presents AI’s moment to shine,” Zack Kass, a futurist and former head of OpenAI’s go-to-market strategy, told CNBC’s Silvia Amaro on the Ambrosetti Forum in Italy last month.
“In the event you wonder how hard things could get without AI vis-a-vis automation, and what would occur in a world where you may’t just employ a bunch of individuals overnight, AI presents this alternative proposal,” he added.
Nagendra Bandaru, managing partner and global head of technology services at Indian IT giant Wipro, said clients are using the corporate’s agentic AI solutions “to pivot supplier strategies, adjust trade lanes, and manage duty exposure dynamically as policy landscapes evolve.”
Wipro says it uses a variety of AI systems — each proprietary and supplied by third parties — from large language models to traditional machine learning and computer vision techniques to examine physical assets in cross-border transit.
‘Not a silver bullet’
While it preferred to maintain company names confidential, Wipro said that firms using its AI products to navigate Trump’s tariffs range from a Fortune 500 electronics manufacturer with factories in Asia to an automotive parts supplier exporting to Europe and North America.
“AI is a strong enabler — but not a silver bullet,” Bandaru told CNBC. “It doesn’t replace trade policy strategy, it enhances it by transforming global trade from a reactive challenge right into a proactive, data-driven advantage.”
AI was already a key investment priority for global firms prior to Trump’s sweeping tariff announcements on April. Nearly three-quarters of business leaders ranked AI and generative AI of their top three technologies for investment in 2025, based on a report by Capgemini published in January.
“There are quite a lot of ways AI can assist corporations coping with the tariffs and resulting uncertainty. But any AI solution’s success can be predicated on the standard of the information it has access to,” Ajay Agarwal, partner at Bain Capital Ventures, told CNBC.
The enterprise capitalist said that certainly one of his portfolio corporations, FourKites, uses supply chain network data with AI to assist firms understand the logistics impacts of adjusting suppliers on account of tariffs.
“They’re working with quite a lot of Fortune 500 corporations to leverage their agents for freight and ocean to supply this level of visibility and intelligence,” Agarwal said.
“Switching suppliers may reduce tariffs costs, but might increase lead times and transportation costs,” he added. “As well as, the volatility of the tariffs [has] severely impacted the rates and capability available in each the ocean and the domestic freight networks.”
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