Welcome to this weeks Sourcing Spotlight. In this weeks edition, we will be looking at the update of the tariffs ahead of the 9th July 90 day deadline, and what's happening this week the lead up to it. Plus how the UK are adapting to become resilient within manufacturing, and is it something the US could learn from? We also have something new, a category update for the week exclusively for the USA and the UK.
The deadline for the tariffs is looming near, but what’s the update? From freshly translated notes of last week’s Tokyo-DC shuttle diplomacy to line-by-line excerpts of the EU’s draft “two-pager,” this report pulls together primary documents, on-record quotes from senior trade envoys, and real-time tariff sheets. If you want to see exactly which clauses are holding up the Japan deal and how a single footnote in Beijing’s rare-earth framework could reset supply chains in August, click through for the full brief. The deadlines are hard, the sources are first-hand, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. Click here to read now.
Stoke-on-Trent quietly rewrote the ceramics playbook, ditching “made-here-or-nowhere” for a razor-fast hybrid model that finishes imported blanks in tightly knit local workshops. The result? Lead-times slashed from 16 weeks to four, cash tied up in inventory cut to a fraction, and a regional guild that lets micro-brands rent a digital decal printer by the hour while global retailers tap a one-stop, carbon-lean supply chain. Curious how a 250-year-old pottery hub turned collaboration into its competitive edge and what your own category could steal from the strategy? Dive into the full story and see why even Spode is reshoring to “Glazed in Stoke-on-Trent. Read more here.
A week in the USA…
Category | What happened | Why it matters / Actions |
|---|---|---|
Prices & demand | • May data show retail sales -0.9 % m/m and the first consumer-spending dip of 2025 (-0.3 %); ISM manufacturing inched up to 49.9 but panelists say tariffs cloud demand. reuters.comreuters.comsupplychaindive.com | Q3 assortment plans should bias toward value and smaller pack-sizes; keep inventory levers flexible in case the back-to-school uplift under-delivers. |
Tariffs & sourcing | • White House lifted headline tariff on Chinese consumer goods to 145 %, forcing SMEs like Plufl and Moment to keep production in China despite cost pain. | Re-price SKUs that are >20 % China-content before August duty step-up; fast-track Vietnam/Mexico qualification studies for 2026 contract renewals. |
A week in the UK…
Category | What happened | Why it matters / actions |
|---|
Prices & demand | UK shop-price inflation bounced back to +0.4 % y/y in June after five months of deflation; food prices accelerated to +3.7 % y/y, pushed up by wholesale meat and higher National Insurance/Living-Wage costs. reuters.com | Expect renewed margin squeeze through summer, especially in grocery. Review price-lock and value-tier strategies ahead of Q3 campaigns. |
Retailer resilience | Marks & Spencer says it will have its online arm fully restored within four weeks after the April cyber-attack that wiped an estimated £300 m from FY profits. theguardian.com | A reminder to audit incident-response playbooks and OT/warehouse system segmentation; insurers report cyber-premiums already firming in UK retail. |
Read on further here…
Click here for the UK weekly update
Click here for the USA weekly update
After all that…
💡 Top Sourcing Tip of the Week:
Ask every supplier for their nearest free-trade–agreement option, shifting even one finishing step (assembly, packaging, or labelling) into a partner facility inside an FTA country can legally re-origin your product, cutting tariffs and reducing paperwork with almost no change to your production flow.
That’s it for this weeks Sourcing Spotlight.
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