By Stephen DeAngelis
For many people, the world appears to be on the brink of chaos. Some experts are calling this a BANI environment. BANI stands for Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear, and Incomprehensible. High on the list of things contributing to this new environment are tariffs. Edward Anderson, a professor and supply chain expert at University of Texas, laments, “Right now, uncertainty is paralyzing everything.”[1] Although supply chain paralysis might be a bit of an overstatement, there is unquestionably a great deal of uncertainty in the air. And that uncertainty is transforming supply chains in profound ways.
Supply chain professionals increasingly believe this BANI environment is the new normal rather a temporary situation that can be waited out. A survey conducted earlier this year found, “More than 90% of professionals … said that accounting for global tensions is part of their companies' long-term planning for their supply chains, up from 86% in the previous year's survey. That includes 68% who said that they are prioritizing onshoring efforts to mitigate the effects of potential tariffs.”[2] With nowhere to hide, analysts from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) suggest, “Every company, regardless of sector or location, needs to build tariffs and the related uncertainty into its planning and operating model.”[3]
Re-wiring Supply Chains
BCG analysts assert, “These are the biggest changes to the world trading system since the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs came into effect in 1947.” And for some executives, the changes have been both surprising and unwelcome. Carlos Cordon, a Professor of Strategy and Supply Chain Management at IMD, writes, “Many companies had expected a second Donald Trump term to bring regulatory loosening and market-friendly policy. But instead of clarity, they are now facing renewed volatility — especially on trade.”[4]
Mustafa Raza, an undergraduate student specializing in supply chain management, observes, “Tariffs are disrupting the intricate ecosystem that makes up global trade in 2025.”[5] He goes on to detail how tariffs are affecting economic sectors (like retail, agriculture, electronics, and automobiles) and business strategies (like near-shoring and re-shoring, supplier diversification, technology investments, and pricing strategies). He explains, “Geopolitical tensions, particularly U.S.-China trade disputes, add uncertainty, making long term planning difficult. Escalating trade wars could disrupt 20% of global trade by 2030. … In 2025, tariffs are more than a trade policy — they’re a catalyst for supply chain transformation.”
Some of the ways that supply chains are transforming are becoming clearer. Cordon writes, “As tariffs rise on goods bound for the US, some companies are exploring friendshoring — shifting final assembly to countries like Mexico, where trade ties are more predictable. Others are assembling Chinese-made components in third countries across Southeast Asia or adding just enough value to legally shift a product’s origin.” Cordon insists that knowing where parts or products are made is essential in today’s BANI environment. He explains, “Beneath the headlines, executives are left to face a more technical challenge: dealing with rules of origin. These rules determine where a product is ‘from’ for tariff purposes, based on where it was made or how much it was changed during production. Once a compliance detail, they’ve become a chokepoint in global supply chains.”
BCG executives Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak, Paul Swartz, and Martin Reeves predict U.S. companies will feel supply chain shocks to a greater extent than companies operating elsewhere. They explain, “By starting a trade war on all fronts — a 360° trade war — the U.S. may receive global and cumulative blowback, while other countries will only see an impact on their trade with the U.S. Fighting a narrow trade war is not the same as fighting one on all fronts, as the impacts of both supply and demand shocks accumulate.”[6]
Thriving in a BANI environment
As I have written elsewhere, “In this BANI world, resilience graduates from mere virtue to survival skill — resiliency is the only currency that holds value.”[7] Achieving resilience is not easy. The answer lies in embracing solutions purpose-built to decode this BANI environment and, by extension, provide control systems that generate and sustain what Enterra Solutions® calls enterprise resiliency. Artificial intelligence (AI) powered solutions can help deal with the complex, BANI environment. Solutions like the Enterra Dynamic Enterprise Resiliency System™ (EDERS™) leverages advanced autonomous reasoning and decision science to help organizations not just survive but thrive in a BANI world. By blending elegant AI with explanatory mathematics, EDERS is a technology platform that processes complexity, anticipates non-linear risks, and adapts in real time. By design, EDERS transforms chaos into clarity and brittleness into resilience.
Cordon explains why utilizing advanced planning solutions is important. He writes, “In practice, the bar is high, the rules are vague, and the documentation required is both costly and time-consuming. For companies with complex supply chains, proving origin is often more art than science. The best defense is preparation. That means mapping where every part comes from, tracking value added at each stage, and keeping records that regulators can verify. Scenario planning also helps — testing whether a production shift actually delivers tariff relief or simply adds cost. Today, knowing your inputs is just as important as where your outputs land.”
Industry journalist Nathan Owens explains, “As tariff policies change rapidly, companies are scrambling to understand the volatile impacts on their operations, from raw material costs to supply chain disruptions.”[8] He points to Enterra® as one of the leading companies helping clients navigate and understand “the volatile impacts on their operations, from raw material costs to supply chain disruptions.”
Concluding Thoughts
Analysts from McKinsey & Company write, “In our view, the history that led to this volatile moment is important but not as important as what comes next. Many will agree that global and local economies need to find a new balance: a United States that produces more of what it consumes, a China that consumes more of what it produces, a Europe that is competitive and can grow, and a ‘global south’ that connects with advanced economies and finds its path to prosperity. To achieve these outcomes, leaders of business, government, and society can extend their attention beyond today’s trade and budget deficit debates to ask what they can do to get the global economy on the path to achieve this goal.”[9] That goal will not be easy to achieve in world leaning toward protectionism. If protectionism expands, the Editorial Board at the Wall Street Journal pictures a bleak future. They write, “The result is likely to be every nation for itself, as countries seek to carve up global markets based not on market efficiency but for political advantage. In the worst case, the world trading system could devolve into beggar-thy-neighbor policies as in the 1930s.”[10]
Hopefully, that won’t be the final result of today’s BANI environment. To escape this BANI condition, we need to construct its complete opposite: a world in which resilience replaces brittleness, explainability reduces anxiety, anticipatory actions tame non-linearity, and lucidity surpasses incomprehensibility. That’s how we get REAL (resilient, explainable, anticipatory, lucid) with our chaotic world.
Footnotes
[1] Edward G. Anderson, Jr., “Tariffs Reshape Supply Chains in Unpredictable Ways,” Material Handling & Logistics, 30 May 2025.
[2] Staff, “Survey: Trade Wars Becoming New Normal for Supply Chains,” SupplyChainBrain, 20 March 2025.
[3] Dominic DeSapio, Marc Gilbert, Keith Halliday, Sarah Lichtblau, Michael McAdoo, and Cristián Rodríguez-Chiffelle, “There’s Nowhere to Hide as Tariffs Reshape Global Trade,” Boston Consulting Group, 3 April 2025.
[4] Carlos Cordon, “Rebuilding supply chains in the age of tariffs,” I by IMD, 20 June 2025.
[5] Mustafa Raza, “How Tariffs Are Reshaping Global Supply Chains in 2025,” SupplyChainBrain, 25 June 2025.
[6] Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak, Paul Swartz, and Martin Reeves, “Understanding the Global Macroeconomic Impacts of Trump’s Tariffs,” Harvard Business Review, 10 April 2025.
[7] Stephen DeAngelis, “Personal and Enterprise Resiliency: Going from BANI to REAL,” DeAngelis Review, 24 June 2025.
[8] Nathan Owens, “Tracking tariffs: The latest frontier in AI,” Manufacturing Dive, 24 April 2025.
[9] Sven Smit, Shubham Singhal, Olivia White, Ezra Greenberg, Jan Mischke, Matt Watters, Cindy Levy, and Rebecca J. Anderson, “In a moment of tariffs, can the world find balance and trust to thrive?” McKinsey & Company, 2 May 2025.
[10] Editorial Board, “Trump’s New Protectionist Age,” The Wall Street Journal, 3 April 2025.
