Sent Items #182: Monday, March 24, 2025

Enjoy another trip to Vegas for those traveling to Shoptalk this week. Nope, I will not be there. Some of you are on Vegas trip 4 or 5 of the year already. Much more resilient than I.

The next couple of weeks will be noisy as we head towards April 2nd, what Trump has dubbed “Liberation Day”. The day he will put in place reciprocal tariffs that seek to equalize U.S. tariffs with the duties charged by trading partners, as well as tariffs on sectors like automobiles, pharmaceuticals and semiconductors.

A few quick hits:

• The MLB season starts on Thursday. Long time readers know that the only professional sports team I really, really, really care about is the New York Yankees. They currently have the 3rd best odds to win the World Series (behind the Dodgers and the Braves). I was similarly bullish until we learned that their star pitcher Gerrit Cole will miss the season. But 162 games is a long season (just ask my wife) so anything can happen.

• I’m realizing what AI can do is really incredible. At Third Person, we continue to develop new features that leverage high quality AI models as they become free, ubiquitous, and inexpensive to run. I’ve never been a first-mover with tech, and that now seems to be paying. Do not fall any further behind at this point, and start using AI and Voice products.

• Speaking of Third Person, we will be launching a brand referral program this week that rewards you for referring brands to Third Person. I want to give my readers early access to become a partner here (link)

• Finally, my friends at Parabola released their 2025 supply chain tech stack report (link). They asked 90 of the top supply chain leaders, from under $1M to over $1B in revenue, what they think about a handful of topics including the role of AI in e-commerce operations over the next 3–5 years. The reality is bleak: only 7% of brands are "very satisfied" with their tech stack.

  Here's what they found:

  → 59.6% cite lack of integration between tools as their #1 pain point

  → 44.9% have budget constraints as their primary barrier to adopting new tech

  → 51.7% are already using AI tools and another 34.8% are implementing soon

  → ZERO respondents dismissed AI as overhyped (yes, literally zero)

  Get yourself a copy of the report for free here (link).

A new unboxing video, this time featuring one of my (I mean Henry’s) favorite new brands, Tally’s Ranch. Follow Third Person on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube to stay up to date.

For Importers Rushing to Beat Tariffs, It’s Life on the Edge (WSJ)

Luckily I bring you news before it breaks!! For my readers, you may remember I discussed this in Sent Items #180 on March 9 (link):

The gist of it is that Trump’s approach means that even careful planning isn’t enough to spare importers from unplanned fees. Trump has made tariffs a signature part of his second term, using the levies both as a negotiating tactic and a strategy he says will revive American manufacturing. The rollout has been volatile. A 25% tariff on Mexican and Canadian products was first scheduled to go into effect Feb. 4 but then was delayed by a month at the last minute. The levy took effect as scheduled on March 4—but within days, it was suspended again until April 2.

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in California, the main gateway for imports from China, are being flooded with container volumes last seen during the Covid-19 pandemic. The port complex handled the equivalent of 955,480 import containers in January, a 25% increase from the same month last year.

In Canada and Mexico, factories are seeing wild swings in purchasing. Stocks of finished goods in both countries in December and January rose at the fastest pace in years, according to S&P Global survey data. The inventory levels stopped growing in February in Canada and fell in Mexico after U.S. importers stocked up on goods in efforts to beat the deadline.

It wouldn’t be a fair issue of Sent Items without a post on TARIFFS. So here we go:

Alex Yancher, the CEO of Passport, posted this update on De Minimis on LinkedIn over the weekend:

De Minimis Update Interesting note from my international shipper industry group last night... 1) The USPS and CBP are working daily on how to handle the de minimis going away and 2) they are preparing for the DM [de minimis] going away not just for China but for Canada and RoW [rest of world] as well. Reading the tea leaves, make me think there is a high probability the de minimis is likely going away April 2 in Trump's big reciprocal trade announcements and he may even remove it for non-China country of origin. With that said, I also think that this won't be implemented right away and there will be a 30day (or more) grace period.

I’ll leave you with the German Forklift Championship and the announcers are HYPED up:

Have a great week!

- Matt

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