There is a sentence in a risk paper published by Marsh in June 2026 that is worth quoting, and that perhaps everyone should know in such a complex and delicate period of history:
“A return to the pre-2025 status quo of trade policy stability should not be expected.”
If only it were a forecast.
No, it is a declaration of regime change.
For decades, international trade operated on this belief: tariffs were exceptional tools; war was a remote scenario; stability was guaranteed by the system. And so companies could plan their supply chains over multi-year horizons, set procurement contracts with greater price certainty and treat tariff volatility as a rare event to be managed when it occurred.
An assumption that is now obsolete, because the truth is this: there is no going back.
The point, however, goes beyond tariffs. The same logic now runs through export controls on strategic technologies, sanctions, industrial subsidies, local content requirements and limits on foreign investment tied to economic security.
National security, technological autonomy and political reliability are entering decisions that for years depended mainly on cost. Economic geography is once again political geography as well. And all of this probably cannot be undone.
What is happening now
But why is there no going back? Let us look at the facts and at what is happening in the world right now, particularly in economic and financial terms.
The first development to consider is the failure to renew the USMCA in its current form: the trade agreement that underpins nearly 2 trillion dollars of trade in goods and services across North America. The scheduled review took place on 1 July 2026, but the United States did not agree to renew the agreement. The USMCA nonetheless remains in force: meanwhile, however, negotiations continue.
Without a subsequent agreement, the review process will be repeated every year until any extension or the scheduled expiry in 2036.
For companies, the risk is immense: long-term planning cycles become harder when tariff access is subject to repeated reviews.
The greatest risk of this exercise is that a trade framework designed to provide predictability becomes a recurring political bargaining table. From this July onwards, companies may have to assess their exposure continuously throughout the entire process, not just at the key stages of the negotiations.
The second development is the chaotic legal sequence of US tariffs in 2025 and 2026.
As already discussed in one of our articles on the subject, in 2025 the administration imposed a series of tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. On 20 February 2026 the Supreme Court ruled that the law did not authorise the President to impose tariffs.
The administration responded by introducing a new temporary 10% global tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act. This measure, too, was ruled unlawful by the Court of International Trade on 7 May 2026.
The ruling, however, did not produce a universal block. The Court limited relief to the plaintiff importers and to the State of Washington, declining to extend the injunction to all economic operators.
Has this changed anything? A great deal legally, less operationally. Companies faced first the doubt over refunds of the tariffs declared unlawful, and then the uncertainty surrounding the new instruments used to replace them.
The rules change, are challenged, fall away and reappear through different instruments. Meanwhile, goods, contracts and payments keep moving.
The third development is the assessment by Marsh Risk, which describes the future as
‘a perpetually higher-friction trade policy environment’.
In short, what we are experiencing today does not look like a temporary spike followed by normalisation. It looks more like a structural condition that has now settled in.
Uncertainty also has effects before a new tariff actually comes into force. Companies postpone investment, hiring and cross-border commitments because, when the rules can change, the value of waiting increases.
According to a European Central Bank estimate of the impact of trade uncertainty, its rise in 2025 is associated with a reduction of around 0.3 percentage points in real Eurozone growth compared with the previous year. The estimated impact on business investment was around three times greater than that on private consumption.
The damage, therefore, comes not only through customs but also through the decisions that are not taken.
If the world is changing, who stands to gain?
The cost of uncertainty will become a new constant in markets.
When the supply chain is stable and tariffs are predictable, a company can optimise its procurement contracts, its inventory and its logistics. In short, work with peace of mind. Calmly. Pursue longer-range projects and plans.
But when tariff policy becomes a political variable under constant negotiation, that optimisation becomes impossible. The company has to hold larger safety stocks, diversify suppliers even when it is less efficient, and avoid long contracts that could prove disadvantageous under different tariff scenarios.
This also changes the nature of competitive advantage. The companies likely to benefit are those with more options: enough liquidity to absorb larger inventories, suppliers already qualified in different regions, adaptable contracts, customs expertise and a presence spread across several markets.
Diversifying sources of supply is now considered one of the main responses to the risks generated by geopolitical instability. In a higher-friction economy, redundancy takes on the value of a form of capital.
According to World Trade Organization data, the simple average of applied MFN tariffs stands at 3.4% in the United States, 3.8% in Canada and 11.1% in Mexico.
These percentages, however, do not directly describe USMCA-compliant trade, which benefits from a preferential regime. The decisive variable will therefore be which goods continue to benefit from preferential treatment, which rules of origin are amended and which categories are hit by additional tariffs or restrictions.
We will see what happens, but one thing is certain: amid widespread uncertainty, many lose and few gain.
What changes for Italian companies
North American tariff risk does not only concern companies with plants in the United States, Mexico or Canada. It concerns anyone who exports to those markets, anyone with suppliers in that supply chain and anyone who competes with companies that belong to it.
Exposure, moreover, does not depend solely on where the final plant is located. What matters is the customs origin of components, the route the goods take, the currency of contracts, the availability of raw materials and the position of customers along the supply chain.
Here too, the issue goes beyond tariffs. Divergent technical standards, local content requirements, export controls, investment restrictions and incentives reserved for domestic production can make a market harder to reach without formally closing it.
Whichever scenario materialises, companies should bear in mind that the future of North American trade policy will very likely be disorderly and unpredictable. And there is no going back from this. A trading environment of permanently higher friction appears the most likely condition.
What now?
With tariff risk now a permanent variable in strategic planning, companies will have to stop treating it as an exception and build different plans. Plans able to incorporate variables that depend not on how the USMCA is resolved, but on the ability to operate well in whatever scenario materialises.
The first step is to understand where the exposure really lies: which products generate the highest margin, what customs origin they have, which suppliers are hard to replace, which contracts can be adjusted and which alternative markets are already accessible.
This is the economy now. For how long, no one can say, but perhaps for a long time. We have to accept it: stability is not coming back.
Adaptability is set to become the new stability.
New Connections (FAQ)
We are a small Italian business with no direct exports to the US. Why does this concern us?
Because of the indirect supply chain. If one of your main customers exports to the United States, or if one of your suppliers buys components from the USMCA area, tariff changes ripple along the supply chain even without a direct commercial relationship with the North American market. The second reason is competitive: if your competitors have more exposed North American supply chains, a high tariff may hit them harder than you, opening up an advantage worth mapping.
How do you build a plan on a variable that, by definition, cannot be predicted?
Scenario planning replaces forecast-based planning. Instead of building a plan on one specific tariff assumption, you build three: one with tariffs stable at current levels, one with a moderate increase (10-15%), one with a severe increase (25% or more). For each, you define in advance which levers to pull: alternative suppliers already qualified, contracts with adjustment clauses, plans to diversify end markets. The value lies not in the correct forecast, but in the speed of response when the scenario materialises.
Is tariff risk only for those who physically manufacture, or does it also concern those operating solely in Italy?
It concerns anyone whose competitors have North American supply chains, anyone who buys raw materials or components that pass through those markets, and anyone competing in price segments where tariffs shift relative costs between players. In sectors such as fashion, furniture, food and machinery, where made in Italy competes directly with North American or Asian production distributed in the US, the tariff impact reshapes the cost structure of every competitor, not just those with factories overseas.
Is the problem only about tariffs?
No. A market can remain formally open and still become harder to reach.
Local content requirements, divergent technical standards, subsidies reserved for domestic producers, export controls and investment restrictions can alter access to technology, capital and contracts even without any increase in the customs duty rate. This is why companies must monitor the entire system of access to a market: rules of origin, certifications, public incentives, technological constraints and contractual terms.