Tariffs haven't brought US manufacturing back, says Altana CEO

Supply chain management software company Altana has watched tariff policies reshape global trade over the past year and a half—and the data tells a clear story: despite promises to bring manufacturing back home, the trade restrictions haven't achieved that goal.

CEO Evan Smith discussed these findings on the Decoder podcast, offering insights from Altana's unique vantage point. The company works with nine governments, eight of the ten largest logistics providers worldwide, and Fortune 1000 companies navigating an increasingly fragmented trading landscape.

The tariff reality#

When pressed directly about whether Trump administration tariffs have succeeded in relocating manufacturing to the United States, Smith said simply: no. Instead, what Altana's data reveals is a world adapting to new border complexities, with trade policy shifting almost daily across multiple jurisdictions.

The promised jobs haven't materialized. Instead, companies are investing heavily in compliance infrastructure—new layers of paperwork, customs procedures, and regulatory navigation that didn't exist in the previous era of globalization.

AI as the practical answer#

To manage this added friction, Altana just acquired Cervo AI, a platform designed to automate customs brokerage workflows. The deal highlights an ironic solution: as governments erect new bureaucratic barriers, companies must deploy artificial intelligence to fill out forms just to maintain the flow of goods that once moved freely.

Smith acknowledged the paradox directly: "We're now having robots fill out forms presumably for other robots to read just to get back to the trade we had before." His response was candid—Altana itself deploys AI agents on both sides of borders to orchestrate these interactions, treating agentic automation not as a temporary workaround but as the future architecture of global commerce.

Reshaping how software gets built#

Beyond the trade policy implications, Smith revealed how Altana itself is transforming its product development process. The company, now nearly 300 people, has moved away from traditional divisions between product managers, designers, and engineers. Instead, domain experts in customs, logistics, and trade compliance are collaborating directly with technologists to make faster product decisions and ship features more quickly.

This convergence of roles—where engineers design, designers ship code, and product managers prototype—reflects broader shifts happening across software development as agentic AI tools accelerate workflows. Smith noted the cultural tension is real: established specialists sometimes feel threatened by dissolving traditional boundaries. But for a company responding to real-time changes in global trade policy, the flexibility has proven essential.