The News
FedEx CEO Raj Subramaniam said Thursday that the global shipping and logistics company was prepared to deal with the “operational complexities” triggered by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Still, “things are changing by the minute,” he said at Semafor’s World Economy Summit in Washington, DC. “So far things are OK, but I can’t tell you what happens next week.”
The uncertainty, he said, has raised the question of whether global supply chain infrastructure can physically clear all the packages and freight moving across the world: “It’s going to be a very different dynamic.”
However, Subramaniam said the COVID-19 pandemic provided lessons that have helped “prepare FedEx for this world where disruption seems to be the norm.”
“While nobody cared about supply chains before the pandemic, now supply chains are part of every boardroom conversation,” he said, “and so we have evolved our mission to make supply chains smarter for everyone.”
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Subramaniam also discussed how the pandemic disrupted the global supply chain and prepared the company to take advantage of artificial intelligence tools. The company has used machine learning, deep learning models, and generative AI to organize data and create a “digital twin” for FedEx.
“What we have essentially done is taken this complex physical network, built a digital twin, and then on top of that, now we are applying all these latest in AI and ML tools, and to be able to do more things to make supply chains smarter,” he said.
The Semafor View
Beijing is facing significant challenges to its economy, but how Chinese officials choose to navigate those risks could look quite different to other countries’ approach. Beijing wants to project influence abroad, and for global companies there is a need to balance supply chain shifts with China’s push into cutting edge technologies.