How Trump’s tariff chaos is already changing global trade

Today’s episode of Decoder is a little different, and I think it’s one of the more illuminating conversations I’ve had in a while. I’m talking to Evan Smith, the cofounder and CEO of Altana, a company that makes software to track and manage the global supply chain. Smith started Altana in 2019 because he predicted that the first wave of globalized manufacturing and free trade would come to an end, and companies would need powerful tools to adapt their supply chains as borders, tariffs, and tensions got more complicated. Here in 2025, that looks like it was a pretty good bet, even if the way it’s playing out is a little more stressful and chaotic than anyone really wants. The easiest way to think about Altana’s product is that it’s a map of the global supply chain — you’ll hear us call it that several times in this conversation. What that means is that Smith has a front-row seat to how things like Trump’s tariffs and isolationist trade policy are playing out in real time. So while we ... Read full article.