Trump tariffs manufacturing jobs was the promise: use import taxes to push production back into the United States. Evan Smith, cofounder and CEO of Altana, told The Verge’s Decoder podcast that Altana is not seeing that result in its view of global shipping and trade data.
Smith’s company sells software for managing supply chains, customs compliance and trade operations across countries. He said Altana works with eight of the world’s 10 largest logistics providers, government agencies including US Customs and Border Protection, Fortune 1,000 companies and suppliers. That gives the company a broad, if commercial, window into how goods still move through global networks despite changing rules.
Asked directly whether tariffs had brought manufacturing jobs back to the US, Smith’s answer was no, according to The Verge. The point matters because tariffs were sold as a tool for reshoring production, while Smith described a world still dependent on cross-border supply chains and more burdened by border paperwork, enforcement and policy churn.
Did tariffs bring manufacturing jobs back?
Smith said no. The Verge reported that Altana’s data shows global supply chains remain central to trade, while new tariff rules have added complexity rather than producing the manufacturing revival supporters promised.
A tariff is a tax on imported goods. It can make foreign-made products more expensive, but that does not by itself create factories, suppliers, trained workers or the logistics needed to shift production into another country.
Smith framed the current trade system as more fragmented and security-focused than the earlier era of relatively open globalization. He said governments and companies are putting more weight on enforcement, customs and economic security, while still needing trade to keep food, fuel, medical devices and other goods moving.
The interview also covered Altana’s acquisition of Cervo AI, a company The Verge described as making an AI platform for customs brokerage. Smith said the deal fits Altana’s work on using AI agents to help organizations handle border processes and compliance. In his telling, AI systems can sit on both sides of a trade transaction, helping companies and agencies process the forms and decisions that now come with moving goods across borders.
That is a useful business pitch, and also a bleak little diagram of the problem: more rules generate more paperwork, which creates more software demand. Smith argued that given today’s level of border and supply-chain complexity, artificial intelligence is the practical way to support enforcement while keeping trade active.
Altana itself is also being reshaped by AI, Smith said. The company has just under 300 employees and may have crossed that mark with the Cervo AI acquisition. He said product managers, designers, engineers and domain experts are beginning to work across old role boundaries as AI tools make prototyping and coding faster.
Smith was careful about the limits. He told The Verge that building prototypes has become much easier, but deploying reliable software with strict service-level agreements for major organizations remains difficult. He also said token spending has risen at the margin but has not materially hit Altana’s bottom line.
The trade takeaway is less ambiguous. According to Smith, tariffs have not delivered the advertised return of US manufacturing jobs, while companies and governments are now paying for systems to manage the mess those rules helped create.
This story draws on original reporting from The Verge.
