How can you mitigate the impact of trade policies on your business strategy?

By identifying these factors, businesses can gauge their competitiveness, profitability, and compliance within both domestic and international markets. Moreover, the emphasis on monitoring changes and trends in trade policies demonstrates the necessity of staying informed and adaptable. Trade agreements, disputes, and conflicts can significantly impact business operations in the short and long term. Being proactive in monitoring these developments allows businesses to anticipate potential disruptions, seize opportunities arising from policy changes, and safeguard against adverse effects.

If you developed your strategy the right way, you already have a list of the key assumptions driving your strategy as well as the key risks for the execution of your strategy. Therefore, this should be the starting point for determining what countries are the highest risk, and you can then define what are the key regulations in these countries that are affecting your strategy. Finally, for those key countries that are key to your strategy you can then identify all the proposals that might affect your strategy, and then assess the likelihood and the timing of these proposals.

To mitigate the impact of trade policies on your business strategy, 1. Diversify Suppliers: Expand your global supplier network to reduce reliance on affected regions. For instance, having alternative suppliers can safeguard operations during trade conflicts. 2. Monitor Regulations: Stay updated on trade policies to adjust sourcing strategies promptly. 3. Adaptability: Build flexibility into your business model. For example, adjust pricing or product offerings in response to tariff changes. 4. Advocacy and Relationships: Engage with industry associations and policymakers to influence trade discussions positively. These strategies will help navigate trade policy impacts and sustain business growth.

By expanding into new geographic areas and industries, businesses can mitigate risks associated with relying too heavily on a single market or sector. Furthermore, the recommendation to leverage market research and networking underscores the practical steps businesses can take to identify and enter these new markets. Overall, diversifying markets and customer bases can enhance a company's ability to withstand trade shocks and capitalize on emerging opportunities.

It's true that diversifying the customers you serve, the countries that you sell in, can all help spread the risk. However, be aware that as you expand your customer base you are also spreading your resources to cover larger geographies. In my experience, this will strain the resources of the company, it will also make the organization more complicated, and it will likely affect the way you manage your customer base. So if you are going to diversity, make sure that you build a business case because there will be additional costs and complexity with this change in scope.

Establish your business ecosystem. Make it part of your competitive strategy and part of your master business plan. Polices are always dynamic and can effect a business anytime as per the market dynamics and international scenarios. To be dependent on such will greatly affect business in the long run It will be a transformational thing. In starting the business needs to be aligned with the policies and in parallel start working on your ecosystem. Identify supply chain loopholes that are perpendicular to your business. Invest In the development of a value chain that will feed your ecosystem. In this way direct the cash coming from initial business to develop your value chain.

I don't think there much you can do with your customers, in terms of the value you deliver in the context of Trade. This is potentially a very weak VP and it should not be deployed. However, I do agree that you have to be very active in engaging the government and industry organizations that are involved in developing regulations. Make sure that you are sharing both your VP as well as your concerns about trade policies.

Strategy is never fixed, it's iterative as it has to evolve to meet the market conditions as well as to adjust for the execution learning. In this context, it's important to update your stakeholders when a major assumption changes or a major risk materializes. Be proactive, be clear, and make sure that you have a sense of urgency.

Entenda claramente as competências que as pessoas e seu negócio possuem. Caso seja necessário adaptar sua opera??o devido a qualquer restri??o política, econ?mica ou legal será muito mais fácil para todos adaptarem a dire??o do que mudar todo seu conhecimento do zero. Entender o que a empresa é capaz de fazer e estar pronto pra mudar garante agilidade nesses momentos.

Minha experiência passada numa empresa de servi?os nos levou a um problema parecido: tínhamos unidades no Brasil e na Holanda. E come?amos a ter demanda por nossos servi?os para serem prestados na Malásia, Reino Unido, Brasil e vários outros lugares espalhados pelo globo. Solu??o: analisar os custos de constitui??o de filiais em outros países de modo a otimizar custos vs. impostos. Optamos até por ter nossa folha (com profissionais de várias nacionalidades) nas Ilhas Virgens Britanicas. E os contratos com nossos clientes eram fechados a partir da filial que oferecia a melhor otimiza??o de impostos. Neste caso é fundamental contratar uma consultoria internacional para fazer estes estudos. é um custo adicional, mas que se paga rapidamente.