Sledgehammers, Crowbars, and the Future of U.S. Trade Policy W/ Jeff Rittener

0:01Jeff Rittener: Hi, I'm Kelly Barner and this is the Art of Supply podcast. Every business story has a supply chain angle and those stories deserve to be told. This show digs deep into news headlines and interviews thought leaders, executives, and newsmakers to capture their perspective in their own words. With no agenda to lead us in any particular direction. We'll offer you objective coverage of geopolitics, innovation, and competition. Facts will always take precedence over hype. The rest is up to you. Today on the show, I'm glad to welcome Jeff Rittner. Jeff is an international trade and compliance advisor, and he also owns Rittner Trade Services.

0:51Jeff Rittener: He's here today so that we can get into one of my favorite topics, and that is, of course, the very messy world of tariffs and global trade. So Jeff, thank you so much for being here.

1:04Kelly Barner: Well, thank you, Kelly, for having me join you. This is going to be fun.

1:08Jeff Rittener: Yeah, no, I agree. And I think giving people some context is helpful here too. Your background is fascinating, and of course, it involves global trade. Do you mind sort of giving my audience a sense of where you built up your experience and the roles that you've held?

1:24Kelly Barner: Yeah, no, it has been an amazing career. I spent more than 30 years at a multinational corporation, Intel Corporation, and I got started really in the area of export controls. And I was out of school looking for a job in international business. People would ask me, well, what are you going to do? And I said, international business. I don't know. And so I got a job at a company and I learned the ropes. I learned all about export controls, that there are country groups and there are restrictions and licenses. And then I got the job at Intel and that began the journey. And I started off as an analyst.

2:04Kelly Barner: I used to get faxes on a fax machine and I'd have to look at what was being shipped and figure out, do we have a license? What's the classification? And that's kind of how I got started. And then over time, you know, I just began to develop a sense of not just the export side, but the custom side. And I was given an opportunity in 2012 to actually lead the entire trade organization. And from that moment, I began to build a team. By the time I left Intel, we had over 130 people around the world that were responsible for trade and whether that was the export side or the custom side. And I think one of my highlights in my career was the team protected through export authorizations, protected$3.4 billion of revenue.

2:51Kelly Barner: And they won the highest award at Intel for that. And my most difficult and challenging probably experience was right before I left, I was asked to testify before Congress on why Intel products were showing up on the battlefield in Ukraine. and what were we doing to prevent that? And so I had to sit in front of Congress at a very uncomfortable hearing. But it was probably one of the most difficult things I did, but it also taught me so much. It was an amazing experience. So fast forward to today, Intel decided it was time for me to retire. And so I said, well, wait a minute. The world of trade has never been more important and more relevant at this time, so I need to stay in the game.

3:32Kelly Barner: So I created my own company. I started podcasting. And for a little fun, I bought an Airbnb.

3:38Jeff Rittener: So in your spare time, and I imagine in comparison to global trade, owning or running an Airbnb probably seems simple, I'm guessing.

3:47Kelly Barner: Not, well, it is fairly. So I was really fortunate to have found an Airbnb in Raleigh, North Carolina that was already an Airbnb and was sold to me as such. So it was just a matter of flipping some switches and arranging some things. I do it with my daughter and we work on it together. So it's been fun. Yeah.

4:06Jeff Rittener: Yeah. And you also mentioned podcasting. So no worries for anybody that's just listening to us, but for anybody that's found us on YouTube, they will be aware you've got some pretty cool gear. And I love having fellow podcasters on this show. Let's talk about your show for a minute, Writtener Reflections, because I think it's very relevant to this audience. And we're going to be talking about some of your past episodes today.

4:29Kelly Barner: Yeah. Thanks for that question, Kelly. It's interesting to start, it goes back over six years ago. If you recall, the pandemic hit us. And I was a leader of, you know, multi, over 150 people. And everybody, honestly, at that moment was freaking out. I can't work from home. I got my kids. I don't have the equipment. What am I going to do? Is Intel going to shut down? Are they going to open the office? All these questions. And I realized as a leader that one of the things people wanted more than anything was to hear from leadership. What was really going on? So I started this written reflections as a twice a week memo to the team saying, Hey, here's what I know.

5:10Kelly Barner: Here's what's happening. Here's what's going on with me, et cetera, et cetera. And this went on for a while. It moved to once a week and then once every other week. And I continued that my entire time at Intel 167 episodes.

5:24Jeff Rittener: Wow.

5:25Kelly Barner: And they weren't episodes. They were like memos. And towards the end, I started doing video. So when I left Intel, people said, you know, one of the things we're really going to miss with you leaving is your written reflections. Any way you can carry it on? And I thought, well, I don't know. I've never done a podcast. So I realized that I was used to doing every two-week cadence. And so that's what I've continued with written reflections. And I basically focused my topic primarily on international trade issues. But I also, like I did in my written reflections at Intel, I talk about me. I talked about my testimony before Congress in one episode called Doing the Difficult Things.

6:01Kelly Barner: I've talked about my Airbnb. I've talked about sports. I went to the Super Bowl. So I try to keep it more rounded around my life and what I'm interested in and what I'm doing. And I think people seem to enjoy it.

6:12Jeff Rittener: Yeah. No, absolutely. I'm sure they do. And I also don't think people always appreciate, you know, it's very hard to make difficult decisions. It's very hard to lead a team through a difficult time. But even getting through those things, being able to talk about difficult subjects in a way that is relatable enough to get people to listen to it in podcast form. If you've never tried it, people listening or watching, it is so much harder than you have any idea. And I think one of the effective things that you do is despite the amazing sophistication of your past experience, you really do bring things to a level where it's fully comprehensible.

6:50Jeff Rittener: So you don't necessarily need to be some kind of global trade policy wonk that has also testified before Congress. In fact, one of the episodes recently, you kind of used a toolbox analogy, and you talked about some of the different things that we might find in that toolbox. But thinking about it, at least from an analogy standpoint, in terms of, you know, what gives you speed, what gives you precision, what gives you maximum impact, and then where do you find durability? I wonder if you might talk a little bit about either where the idea for that paradigm came from or how those categories of tools line up so well with some of the different approaches we have today to trade policy.

7:32Kelly Barner: Yeah, no, that's a great question. And I struggled over the last year trying to really understand what was going on in the world of tariffs. And I wanted to be able to explain to people so they could understand. You hear things like 301, 232, 338, what is all of this? IEPA. So the idea came, I was in my shed and I saw my old grandfather's toolbox. And it made me think, you know, these are all tools that are being used today to affect policy, trade policy, really. They're tools. And so I started realizing that each one of the sections related to a tool. And so I worked on that analogy. And, you know, I saw, for example, if you take IEPA, and this was the original, you know, tool that the president used on Liberation Day to really launch his tariff strategy.

8:27Kelly Barner: And IEPA, in many ways, is, I called it the sledgehammer. It was like everything, everywhere, all at once. And it's almost like slamming a sledgehammer. And it just really kind of resonated with me. And I use that same idea to each one of these tools to relate it to an actual tool.

8:47Jeff Rittener: Yeah. What is that old expression? If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right? If you're using the same exact approach on everything. To dig down into what that actually means, not just for trade policy, but for companies. When you think about that sledgehammer approach, what ended up being the effects of overly blunt approaches to trade policy? Yeah.

9:11Kelly Barner: If you step back a minute, blunt, there's this thought that blunt is bad. No, blunt is good. I mean, if you need to have a hard conversation with somebody, sometimes to get their attention, you need to be blunt rather than beating around the bush. And I think what's happened in the world of trade over decades is we had WTO and there were issues. you know no no enforcement um you know different countries you know putting terror uh trade policies that were you know disadvantages to other countries and so there was this beating around the bush no one wanted to really deal with it well this administration came in and said we're going to deal with it we're going to be blunt we're going to get your attention world and so liberation day happened and i think that was really the president's goal is to get everybody's attention.

10:04Kelly Barner: And the IEPA is a tool that, like a sledgehammer, it's quick, it's effective, and it got everybody's attention. And unfortunately, though, sometimes a sledgehammer, I've used a sledgehammer and I've missed. It created some damage. And we're seeing a little bit of that. It is rough and countries have struggled with it, but they did come to the negotiating table. And there have been deals made as a result of that.

10:33Jeff Rittener: Now, you talked about having quick effect because you've got people's attention. Can you talk a little bit about speed? Now, for somebody standing outside of this world or peripheral to it, you almost think to yourself that public sector organizations are typically slow moving by design. You never want to shock a system. And yet, depending on how bad the problem has gotten, sometimes being blunt is more important than being precise, as you said, because it gets people's attention and it starts to drive real change in a relatively short time frame. How does the element of speed come into some of what we've seen take place?

11:14Kelly Barner: Well, I think the reason for the IEPA tariffs was really all about speed. It was to not only to be blunt and so on. It was to be quick. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court ruled that that particular tool was not authorized under IEPA, wasn't the right use. So now the president had to figure out how do I continue the speed, continue the effort. So he leveraged another section, section 122, which was a temporary measure that allowed him to continue that speed. And I think the reason for the speed is because there's a short amount of time, there's a lot of countries, and I think that the U.S. government wants to change the balance of trade.

12:00Kelly Barner: And so these are tools that are used to do that quickly.

12:04Jeff Rittener: And I'm sure some of this, you know, there's different approaches, right? Because some of trade policy or tariff strategy is meant to go into effect and then stay long term. other things that are being addressed are maybe more isolated or, or shorter term issues where we can tweak something, put a rule in place for a time, a problem gets resolved and then it can actually be pulled back. How do you think about the sustained nature of some of the work that's being done? So, you know, what is being put in place because it needs to stay in place. And when are we trying to sort of quick strike, maybe getting to a more precision tool, trying to address something more specific that will then be taken care of and go away?

12:46Kelly Barner: Yeah, that's a great question, Kelly. And I'll refer to two of the tools, section 232 and section 301. So those tools allow the administration to study an issue, right? And put forward a tariff based on a kind of an issue that's been studied and has passed legal scrutiny. And so I think these tools will stay. If you go back to the original Section 301 against China and Trump won, that still exists today. And it continues. Even through the Biden administration, it was not changed. And the 232s are more focused on unfair practices. And currently, they're studying excess capacity, right? And some countries have excess export capacity, and it's really impacting the markets, especially the US market.

13:45Kelly Barner: And so this is a study to make sure you pass all legal hurdles, and then you implement it, and it probably will be around for a while. Now, on the other hand, you've got what's happening today, real time, live, I just read this morning, the President made another decision to restrict imports of certain goods from Canada, but the whole Canadian, there's a tool, section 338, that the president put forward, which goes back to the 1930s, and basically allowed him to immediately assess 50 % tariff on a number of items from Canada. Why? I call that the crowbar, the lever. He's trying to get negotiations and lever, and they had a deal.

14:28Kelly Barner: It was ready to go on a Friday, and my understanding from a lot of the policy experts out there, it was a pretty good deal. But Canada rejected it. Some believe politically. Now, just this week, Canada implemented retaliatory tariffs. And today, the president now banned the import of certain goods. So you can see this is all, I think, leverage to come to a better deal that will be better for both countries and really get down to those real issues that need to be addressed.

14:58Jeff Rittener: Now, one of the things that I personally find so fascinating, and actually both of these things came up in what you just shared, one is that if you think about the different policy priorities of any given administration, and in this case, right, we have Trump one and Trump two, we've got Biden in the middle. It's so interesting because we all think we know where each administration stands on everything and how it affects things. But I'm amazed at how often I'm following a story and it will say, yes, this was something from Trump one that people very much associated with that four-year term, but hey, the Biden administration didn't roll it back.

15:38Jeff Rittener: Or this is something the Biden administration put into practice and the Trump administration didn't roll it back. It's interesting from a trade standpoint, what gets attention politically and what doesn't, And what actually carries across very different administrations, I find that absolutely fascinating. The other one is just how far back, you know, you talked about finding an older toolbox in your shed. That is such an apt visual because so many of these trade policy things or laws and regulations on the books, we're reaching back to the 1920s, the 1930s. I mean, hey, this is the modern era.

16:17Jeff Rittener: We have AI. Everything's automated. But from a trade policy standpoint, it's almost like that precedent is allowing some old, at least stand the test of time, tools in a very new environment and in a very new way. I would love to get your perspective on that sort of digging way back down deep into the back corner of the shed, to the 1930s, and sort of reinvigorating these things and applying them today.

16:46Kelly Barner: Yeah, it's funny you ask that because I read something yesterday that really surprised me. I was talking, you know, the 1930s. Well, I read that the Prime Minister of Canada brought up that there were tariffs levied in the 1880s against Canada. And the Canadians, you know, rebuffed it and stood firm. And it happened to be in an election year.

17:11Jeff Rittener: Interesting.

17:11Kelly Barner: And as a result of those tariffs on Canada, the unpopularity and so on, apparently the House flipped 100 seats, never been done before. And I couldn't help but thinking, oh, my gosh, here we are today. This is all happening right before an election.

17:28Jeff Rittener: I know.

17:28Kelly Barner: And we have to remember, you talked about the different administrations. So much of this really comes down to politics. Yeah. Right? I mean, we are in an election year and you have to wonder how much of this, you know, is really kind of being driven by that election, midterm election. You know, it's really fascinating. When I was in, you know, in the trade world at Intel and I worked a lot with our government affairs, we used to always call this time, this time of elections as silly season.

18:00Jeff Rittener: Oh, that's so funny.

18:01Kelly Barner: Because silly season, it's amazing the silly things that happen. Right. And then once the election's over, things settle down and so on. But it is fascinating. And I go back to your original point. I do think politics play a lot into this. And I'll give you an example, if I may. I did an episode early on, right around the time of the Liberation Day tariffs. And I was really struggling because I was trying to understand what is this administration doing? And I remember the head of USTR under Trump One was Robert Lighthizer. Robert Lighthizer wrote a book recently called No Trade is Free. I don't know if you've read it.

18:38Kelly Barner: I highly recommend it because it would give you incredible insight into what is actually going on. Let me tell you five things that Robert Lighthizer said in that book. Number one, fair trade is what's most important, not free trade, fair trade. Number two, you need to take sometimes unilateral actions. And this is where the tools come in, using tariffs to drive policy. Three, he talked about social policies. The U.S. can use tariffs, these tools to affect social policy. Isn't that amazing? When they came out with Section 301, it's all about a social issue, forced labor. Yes. Right. That's driving a social issue.

19:18Kelly Barner: Countries need to deal with forced labor in their manufacturing through these tariffs. Number four was we should subsidize key industries. We saw that with semis and the Chips Act. Then five, just this idea of balanced trade. And this is the most important because I think this is what's driving all of these actions is that I heard Robert Heisler speak recently. And he said, we need to get to a place where there's balanced trade between countries, not these huge deficits. And so a lot of these things are trying to drive that objective. Yeah.

19:54Jeff Rittener: And it is so difficult because so much of this ends up being wrapped together. One of the things that I remember a lot of attention being drawn to at the very beginning of Trump 2 with some of these tariff conversations and trade policy conversations were starting to happen was the role that currency valuation worldwide also plays into all of this. Because yes, on the one hand, you're trying to get to fair versus free. I'll go with Robert Lighthizer's distinction there. And you want some form of balance of trade. But there's also the impact that any one currency's valuation worldwide has on all of that.

20:33Jeff Rittener: And a little bit of the drag that the United States has to carry with it, because we are the global reserve currency. And so it throws some of these other numbers out of whack. you know it wasn't this necessarily wasn't an area we had planned to get into but i'll give you the opportunity to comment there just because i think it's another illustration of just how big picture so many of these issues are with so many things ultimately sitting underneath

21:02Kelly Barner: yeah and it's a great point kelly because i think what what you're addressing is this whole concept of non-tariff barriers everybody's fixated on the tariffs but there are things like currency manipulation. There are things like excess capacity. There are things like quotas and all sorts of things that are non-tariff trade barriers. And I think when USTR gets into a negotiation with a country, they're not just trying to figure out what should the tariff rate be. They're looking at all these things that the country might have adopted as a trade policy that might have a negative impact on the US.

21:35Kelly Barner: And so these negotiations are long, they're hard, and they're trying to focus. I mean, if you go back to Trump one in section 301, the China deal that if you read Robert Lighthers book, he goes into gruesome detail. He must have taken copious notes of the conversations that happened with China to get to a trade deal. And it was, if you remember, it was all about purchasing soybeans from the U S and so on. So there's, you're right. There's a lot more that goes into these than just tariff tariffs makes the headlines, but there's a lot more behind the scenes. And then what's happening today with China, one of the goals, I think, of this administration is to bring manufacturing back to the US.

22:14Kelly Barner: I just read that because of this US-Canadian trade war, I'll call it, the Japanese beer company Sapporo is now going to have some of their beer manufacturer done processing here in the United States because they want to avoid the tariffs. And now there's an impact, there's an actual restriction on alcohol period. So So you can see how that forces that behavior.

22:36Jeff Rittener: Absolutely. And truthfully, it's interesting where I get to have these conversations where everybody has their own area of specialization. Regular listeners of the show will know that, gosh, when this airs, let's say a month ago, I spoke with Curtis Spencer, whose whole area of focus is foreign trade zones. And he talked about how the tariffs are changing the motivation and the incentives to manufacture in the United States. And I thought he put it simply but logically, it's a little painful along the way. Actually, I think he literally said sometimes bodies fall left and right as we're on our way.

23:10Jeff Rittener: But he did say if that is the goal, it's working, that it may be uncomfortable, it may take longer or be messier than anybody works. But if the stated objective is to reinvigorate manufacturing in the United States, it isn't free, but we are moving in that direction based on some of these policy changes. Yeah.

23:30Kelly Barner: And I think as a general direction, that makes sense. But I think there are some things that don't make sense. I mean, there are things that we can't produce here in the US at a cost effective manner. And so I think it has to be built around reality. Yeah.

23:48Jeff Rittener: Now, the one other area that I want to get into with you is around the cost of compliance. So we've talked about all this sort of very big global stage trade and policy and everything. But for listeners that are working in companies that are trying to figure out like, that's great, but what on earth does that mean for my supply chain? You know, certainly they're concerned about the cost of all of these things, but they're also very worried about remaining compliant with all of these changes as they roll out and then they roll back and then the courts rule and then, you know, we try another way.

24:20Jeff Rittener: You know, given that you had experience working at a large enterprise, if somebody has an intel level of resources, what does enough trade compliance preparedness look like?

24:36Kelly Barner: Yeah, that's just a fantastic question. You know, I kind of look at compliance from three vectors. One is there's the letter of the law and you have to be, you have to be legal, right? Two is ethics. Sometimes a law, you know, you could, you could, there's, the law doesn't prohibit what you want to do, but it's not ethical. And number three is reputational, right? So you might have, okay, the law says I can do it. I don't see any ethical issues. My gosh, if we do this, do you know what kind of reputational hit we're going to, we're going to get? So I think as I think about your question to companies, I believe that they have to step back and look at it from that lens.

25:24Kelly Barner: Are there things that are legally requiring me to stop and not carry on? Or are there ways that I can continue legally going forward? So I do think that's a lens that companies can use.

25:42Jeff Rittener: And I can see within a given company, different functional leaders, either prioritizing sort of one of those facts over another, or having a very different point of view. You know, you think about, yes, we want to do it completely ethically and, you know, successfully, but we also want to do it profitably. And there's all of these different factors. You could almost have a situation where the CEO or board, finance, legal, supply chain are all reeling in a room duking it out. Where does the ownership over direction for figuring out the right form of compliance have to come from?

26:21Kelly Barner: Yeah, that's a great question. So what you described is actually how it happens. And in the past, the trade group at a company was off in a corner somewhere, just making sure nothing bad happened. but today the trade function and the issues are so great that it's actually been elevated to the c-suite when i left intel i was having routine conversations at the c-suite level i would meet with the cfo to help understand where the the tariff hits are hitting us and what we need to do and so i do think that trade needs to be brought into that table needs to be around that table and needs to be able to help contribute to that decision i also believe that most of us in the trade compliance world are more interested in trying to solve real issues at real time.

27:14Kelly Barner: And as a result of that, we sometimes lose the ability to be strategic. And one of the things I'm trying to do as a consultant is help companies step back and be more strategic. Because if you think about what's going on today, if you're in that world trying to address all of this uncertainty, you are probably extremely reactive, just trying to get it done. And you don't have the time to really think, what should we do differently? And so getting that boardroom sort of discussion together, because you need all the different parties to really think about, do we need to change our supply chain? Do we need to do Sapporo beer in the US rather than Canada?

27:55Kelly Barner: That's a strategic decision. And I think that's where companies need to focus.

27:59Jeff Rittener: And one of the other things that you had also touched on previously, even in this conversation, you talked about IEPA, right? But in past episodes, you've acknowledged the fact that, okay, more than half of the IEPA duties that were collected and now have to be refunded have been distributed. but the vast majority of it has gone out to large companies, right? So there's even, what are the rules? What can be done? But how many resources and how much time does any given organization have to go out and seek some of these things that have to be tracked down? Can you talk a little bit about the difference between what an Apple or an Amazon can do to get a refund versus a smaller, even, I mean, good-sized medium enterprise that's importing and exporting might find themselves faced with?

28:46Yes.

28:47Kelly Barner: So I think the first thing to kind of unpack there is there's a huge difference between a large multinational and a small company. Some of the things that large companies, because I've been there, struggle with, so big, so slow, so expensive, really a target of enforcement because there's lots of dollars. So if I think if I'm Apple or Amazon, if I'm the trade department in those two companies right now, I better make sure I'm focusing on compliance because you know, when you've received that much money back, you know, the government's going to come knocking. Small company, they're smaller, they're less resources and they're more agile, less cost, right?

29:29Kelly Barner: Probably not a target of enforcement. And so they can move around quicker. They could maybe make some supply adjustments very quickly because they're agile. It doesn't take much time. If you try to move a battleship, I mean, this is the problem at a large company. So relating that back to your question about the refunds, I think that large companies had the resources. It was easy to go in there. They have the systems, the tools. They could do that. The smaller companies, you know, it's not as easy. But I do think smaller companies, you know, one of the reasons why smaller companies struggle with this is because, number one, they may not know.

30:03Kelly Barner: number two they may uh not have the systems and the tools to really gather that because you do have to have the data on in place right you have to be able to demonstrate that you are due that refund and so they may not have the systems and um you know they may have outsourced the function to somebody so they really don't understand so i think that's the struggle there and i one of the things that i would encourage is that you know that they should have been using a broker and a broker ought to be able to help that company navigate the refund process. If not, then a consultant could be another option.

30:40Kelly Barner: But I do think there are ways, but that's probably some of the reasons.

30:44Jeff Rittener: Yeah. Now the last topic I want to take on, and I say last topic, but this is a big one. So we've just been talking about, yes, a very large global or multinational enterprise has the resources to know what they're owed, let's say, and go out and get it. Then hopefully those resources can be redirected to prepare for audits and inspections and investigations and anything that might come with it because of the attention. Smaller organizations can pivot, can be more agile, but they may not have the know-how in-house to handle not even just the conditions, but the rate at which these trade conditions are changing.

31:26Jeff Rittener: Do you think longer term, it's going to change the decision around who actively participates in global trade? I'll add sort of one more piece to this. You know, I'm avid watcher of Shark Tank. I find the show fascinating, but it never really matters how small a company is. The questions always go to, you know, either where are you sourcing? Where are you manufacturing? Where are you assembling? What's your landed cost? even with a relatively small company that would find themselves standing before the sharks. The expectation is that you're doing a lot of these things offshore to keep costs down, but to also remain compliant is not necessarily so easy today.

32:08Jeff Rittener: So if we take on this one more big topic, I'm just interested in whether you see any shifts coming, any changes on the horizon around how practical it is for organizations at different sizes to participate in a truly global trade environment?

32:25Kelly Barner: Yeah, that question, you know, gets more complicated by the day. Yes. And I do think that organizations that are large, right, are able to fund changes and do where smallers are not. And so I do agree with you. I think that the landscape is changing. I mean, I saw this play out, you know, in the export side, if I will, where we saw most export organizations were kind of nestled down into supply chain or the finance world. And we saw over time they all move towards legal because the stakes were so high from the export side. I think in this custom side, we're going to see similar shifts where the work will be done.

33:13Kelly Barner: And I think if you're in supply chain or you're in finance, you're critical because you've got to be able to, and I talked about this in my podcast, you've got to be able to come up with some sort of matrix to keep track of these tariffs. I mean, some of these tariffs stack.

33:28Jeff Rittener: Yes.

33:28Kelly Barner: So how are you going to do that? And so I think maybe the role of trade in a trade professional is shifting. When I was at Intel, I remember I went through a situation where I realized we didn't have the skill set to deal with all these new export control rules. People were used to just filing routine applications for encryption or whatever. And I told my staff, you know, a license now has become a regulation because it comes back with conditions and you have to comply with it. And so you need to be careful how you go in and ask. So I think in the world of the custom side and this area of chairs, I think the same thing is going to happen.

34:04Kelly Barner: I think the questions are going to have to be asked. People are going to have to start thinking about who's the right part of the company to address this and if we don't really have the ability or the skills or the tools we need to outsource right and i and i think there's a really good model kelly of of um that people can walk through and that is you know this you all starts with a b but you know do i need to borrow resources right now to get over this do i need to go buy the talent that i need to get on top of this and so on do i need to maybe have a blended approach where i bring in other parts of the company, the finance team, the tax team to come in and we work together to kind of figure out how we're going to manage this.

34:46Kelly Barner: Do I use a bot? Some of this could be an AI solution that might help you with your data and so on. So I do think that that's something that companies are going to have to start thinking of their strategy. And it goes back to my point that I think this is all becoming less tactical and more strategic. Yes.

35:05Jeff Rittener: Well, to me, it's also absolutely fascinating. And I will say, because, you know, yes, we have a supply chain and procurement listening audience, but there's very different roles that people might be in and still fall under that umbrella. What I will say, and this is the educational journey that I've been on, it all feels so big and there's so many moving pieces. My approach is typically read what you can, absorb what you can. Over time, it's amazing the pieces that you start to recall to help you put the puzzle together. And, you know, I'm sure it's a little bit like I'm going to date myself here, old school paper, folded maps.

35:45Jeff Rittener: You're never getting it quite back into the shape that it came out of the glove box it. But, you know, when I think about your toolbox, yes, you've got this toolbox, all these things in it. If you pull them all out and you're like, okay, what can I actually do with the things in front of me? They may not actually fit back in the toolbox, but every time you pull them out and every time you try to put them back in, it stays messy, but you have a better sense of understanding for then the new pieces of news coming out. So I think to your points about, you know, what changed today with Canada, or even looking back to Robert Lighthizer's book, yes, it was years ago, but try to understand the mechanics of some of this, because I really do think it makes it not just more interesting to then stay on top of the news, but it's absolutely incredible how little of a baseline you actually need to truly understand and start to almost get hooked like you would on a TV show with some of these things hitting the news headlines.

36:43Kelly Barner: Yeah, absolutely. We live in interesting times. Yes, we do. And I don't think they will get any less interesting over the course of the next few years, that's for sure.

36:54Jeff Rittener: No, probably not. Jeff, I so appreciate you being here to get into these topics with me. I love a good book recommendation. And of course, new homework assignment for everybody. Go subscribe to Writtener Reflections. Listen to that podcast as it comes out, whether it is trade policy or Airbnb or football. Absolutely embrace it. Jeff, thank you so much. I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed this conversation.

37:20Kelly Barner: Likewise, Kelly. I have enjoyed it immensely. And thank you for having me on. And let's keep our eye on the ball.

37:33Jeff Rittener: Art of Supply is part of the Art of Procurement family of brands. To ensure you never miss new content, I invite you to sign up for our newsletter at artofsupply.com. If this episode of the Art of Supply podcast made you think, please spread the word. You can support the show by giving us a thumbs up, a star rating, or a review wherever you find your podcast audio. Join me next week for another deep dive into the art of supply.