This CEO Says Global Trade Is Broken. What Comes Next?

Bold Names

The Wall Street Journal

Technology

4.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Evan Smith is the co-founder and CEO of Altana, one of a few companies that have a global view and insight into the world’s supply chains. Think LinkedIn, but with the ability to track every step of a product’s movement from raw materials to store shelves. That lets him see firsthand how President Trump’s tariffs have thrown global trade networks into chaos as companies rush to rework every step of the manufacturing process. And Smith says this is just the beginning. Is the era of global free trade over? And if so, what comes next? Smith speaks to WSJ’s Christopher Mims and Tim Higgins on the latest episode of the Bold Names podcast. Check Out Past Episodes: Venture Capitalist Sarah Guo’s Surprising Bet on Unsexy AI What This Former USAID Head Had to Say About Elon Musk and DOGE ‘Businesses Don’t Like Uncertainty’: How Cisco Is Navigating AI and Trump 2.0 Palmer Luckey's 'I Told You So' Tour: AI Weapons and Vindication Let us know what you think of the show. Email us at [email protected] Sign up for the WSJ's free Technology newsletter. Read Christopher Mims’s Keywords column. Read Tim Higgins’s column. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void?
0:05.0	Well, with LinkedIn ads, you can know you're reaching the right decision makers.
0:09.0	You can even target them by job title, industry, company, role, seniority, skills, company revenue, and...
0:16.0	Did I say job title yet?
0:17.0	Get started today and see how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with
0:21.4	LinkedIn ads. To get 100 pounds of your first campaign, go to LinkedIn.com slash lead to claim
0:27.2	your credit. Terms and conditions apply. Okay, Mims, we got a good one. You are the author of probably
0:33.9	the definitive book on supply chains. And today's guess is probably the definitive guest on this topic.
0:40.3	What's the big takeaway?
0:42.1	The big takeaway this week is that it feels like we're out of the woods because there's
0:46.2	been a tariff pause, but things remain a mess.
0:50.1	And he is going to get into all the gnarly details about why that is and why our world has changed fundamentally.
0:57.0	We just don't know it yet.
0:58.7	That's next.
1:03.7	There are only a handful of companies in the world that have a truly global view of the world's supply chains.
1:09.8	Not to mention how they've been disrupted
1:11.6	by the current trade war between the U.S. and pretty much everybody. Today we've got Evan Smith,
1:17.7	the co-founder and CEO of one of those companies called Altana. It's kind of like LinkedIn,
1:23.5	but instead of resumes and grindsap posts, it gives its customers insights into the details of their supply chains.
1:30.9	And Smith has a pointed message for anyone who thinks that global trade is going back to normal anytime soon or ever.
1:38.7	I had one board member of a Fortune 50 company tell me that this is economic Pearl Harbor and the world will
1:45.2	never be the same.
	...

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