24: Trade Whiplash: Adapting to Shifting Tariff Landscapes
In this episode, Shane Bogdan (Director of Cross Border Sales at Avalara) breaks down the impact of 2025 tariff adjustments and shifting de minimis regulations. Over the past year, rapid fluctuations in tariff rates have created uncertainty across international commerce, forcing companies to rethink their strategies.
Key takeaways:
• Tariff instability is now a constant, not an exception
• Proactive compliance and tariff modeling are critical
• Upcoming EU de minimis changes will significantly affect cross-border cost structures
As global trade grows more unpredictable, staying informed—and prepared—has never been more important.
Tune in to understand what’s changing and how to navigate what’s next.
Learn more about this topic:
Shane Bogdan | LinkedIn
With over a decade of experience in the world of ecommerce and cross-border trade, Shane has dedicated his career to driving growth for clients while fostering consultative relationships and leading high-performing teams. His expertise spans Business Development, Client Management, Sales, and navigating the complexities of global supply chains. A motivated and results-driven leader, Shane has maintained a track record marked by consistent over-performance through strategic planning and value building. He thrives on establishing relationships, working collaboratively to comprehend unique business needs, and identifying tailor-made opportunities to elevate endeavors.
Transcript
Yeah, I would say unfortunately the trade uncertainty is still out there. I mean you can see that on a weekly basis tariff rates are still moving across the border.
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Nick Agnetti:Welcome back to Outside the Box with Asendia USA podcast. Got my co host Jason Rowland here.
Jason Rowland:Welcome back everybody.
Nick Agnetti:And a very special guest, Shane Bogdan, director of Cross border Sales at Avalara.
Shane Bogdan:Yes, thank you Nick.
Nick Agnetti:Thank you for joining Shane.
Shane Bogdan:Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for your guys partnership with Avalara.
Nick Agnetti: ay for viewers and listeners,:Make sure you stay with it. Shane, could you introduce yourself Avalara and then maybe your focus, what you focus on.
Shane Bogdan:Absolutely. And you know, first off, my name is Shane Bogdan. I'm our director of cross border sales at Avalar.
You know, Avalara has been in the compliance space for 22 plus years. We want to make sure that compliance is easy for everybody.
Everybody understands what's going on, especially staying attuned to what's been happening the past 12 months. It's also a growth arm for, you know, manufacturers, D2C. D2C brands.
How do you continue to grow your brand and make it as seamless and transparent as if it's a domestic transaction as well? So I mean the past 12 months have been wild. We've been calling it the trade whiplash.
Nick Agnetti:Sure.
Shane Bogdan:So happy to dive in on that. Yeah. You know, so right in there.
Jason Rowland:Right.
there's a little bit of this: Shane Bogdan:Well listen, we were again, you know, we've been in the compliance space over 20 plus years and across border it's been no different. But you know, with this really started at the end of January last year. There were the three markets that were in the crosshair.
Sara had Canada, Mexico and China. And it was all primarily about okay, well there's de minimis parcels, the whole safety component of that fentanyl coming over.
Then it was also about domestic domestic manufacturing, having businesses and helping out the Retailers on that front, you know, you guys probably saw then April comes around. It's no longer just those three that are in the crosshairs, it's now the rest of the globe here.
So there were a multitude of changes then from you know, from February to March when the Canada, China, Mexico came into play. April came into play with Liberation Day.
Throughout that there were, you know, 15% to over 50% tariffs enacted across a multitude of countries out there.
Nick Agnetti:Yep.
Shane Bogdan:And then you know there was that negotiation period within there. So on averler side we have a team of over 250 plus trade content specialists that are monitoring all these things behind the scenes.
So businesses will come to us and they go, we don't know what's going on. Well, don't worry about it, we'll handle all that for you.
Because we have a team that's actively doing that and I do have to do a shameless plug here because it's all right, you know, it's a non sales plug but every Tuesday since the beginning of March we've been calling it Trade and Tariff Tuesday. So myself, our cross border GM have been getting on, doing webinars and basically helping educate everybody. What's been going on?
Jason Rowland:Yeah, it's a topic that a lot of companies got away with not having to care about. All of a sudden last year it became such an important topic that it was affecting bottom lines on companies. It was affecting everything. Right.
So everything used to be able to go under the radar now upfront.
Shane Bogdan:Oh yeah.
Jason Rowland:So many retailers, international shippers.
Shane Bogdan:Well and decision making just went out the window.
Nick Agnetti: y negative when I think about: Jason Rowland:To things massively because you don't know what you're committing.
Shane Bogdan:Well so it's, it's funny.
So when we first started that, you know, and Tariff Tuesdays we've always been asking questions of what are you going to do about the current trade uncertainty?
And we would, you know, put up five questions or so and the first one being I don't know yet or we're looking at trade technology partners, we're redistributing our manufacturing, etc. For the first eight months everybody, a majority of the folks would always just answer, I don't know. Everybody was in a complete eight months frozen.
Everybody was frozen. In terms of what do we do because goes back into the term whiplash of okay, tariffs are on one day, well next day they may not be gone.
And you know, everybody kind of saw that. So it created some, some paralysis in terms of any sort of decision making on that front. We're going to move on from 20 because 25 was.
Nick Agnetti:We're done with it. Okay people, we are done. So, so let's move into 20, 26.
So if you could just give us a brief, give us the current state of tariff changes, where things sit today. What does it look like right now?
Shane Bogdan:Yeah, I would say unfortunately the trade uncertainty is still out there. I mean you can see that on a weekly basis tariff rates are still moving across the board. I think last week what India went from 100% down to 18%.
Bangladesh I think just went from 20 to 19. Taiwan just dropped. So there's continue. And there's also continuing threats that are continuing to be published out there.
Jason Rowland:There's not going to be any stop to those kinds of.
Shane Bogdan:Yeah, going forward it's going to continue.
Nick Agnetti:I guess though, if we think about our market. Right. So. So we're here in the United States. When you look at Canada, UK and Australia, where do things sit today?
Shane Bogdan:Yeah, Canada, Australia and uk. I mean, I think the biggest thing between Canada right now is what is the renegotiation of usmca? Yeah, that's a big thing right now.
Is that just going to get pushed or is something else going to be happening from an individual, the standpoint between all three markets on what's happening on that front in relation to the uk?
ing to start talking about by: Jason Rowland:UK is going through with the de minimis right now and the kind of implementation of that 3 Euro, 2 Euro fee for HS line item and then, you know, processing extra, extra fees that are coming all. So what is, what does that look like for you guys and what's the impact?
Shane Bogdan:Yeah, and I think we got to take a step back too in terms of what happened in the US last year around de minimis. Because in May, you know, I always throw these stats out there. De minimis.
Nick Agnetti:I love stats.
Shane Bogdan: Yeah. In: In: In: Jason Rowland:They opened up a umbrella and captured a vast amount of material that was not being captured.
Shane Bogdan:Yeah. And Covid played into it the, the rise of online, you know, Chinese foreign marketplaces came into effect there.
Nick Agnetti:It's a staggering difference.
Shane Bogdan:Yeah. And that's really why also at the beginning those three countries were really in the crosshairs, specifically China as well.
About 60% of those parcels were coming in.
Nick Agnetti:I think anybody disagreed and we're not going to get into opinions here, but with the fact that for, let's say US or native, we'll call it native based brands, shippers, that the, the low value Chinese goods were not an issue. Oh, I think everybody could agree that that's an issue.
Shane Bogdan:Absolutely.
Nick Agnetti:I think maybe we could also agree that the whiplash that happened last year was also created some significant uncertainty and issues as well. All right, let's go back to, let's talk about the EU though.
Shane Bogdan:Yeah.
Nick Agnetti:So we got a big thing coming up this summer.
Shane Bogdan:Yeah, exactly. And I, you know, we removed it. The US removed it in May.
Then they, you know, on all countries, August 29, the US said, okay, we're removing de minimis for all markets coming into imports coming to the US under de minimis. And now other markets are keep, are, are looking at this as well and they're saying, okay, should we start removing de minimis.
And if you look at some of the recent stats about, you know, the influx of, you know, China just came out with a $1 trillion surplus. It was the highest they've ever had.
And if you look at the difference of what they lost from the US market, they just moved all of that over to the EU and all these other markets.
Nick Agnetti:I saw that.
Shane Bogdan: lieve it's June or July, July: Jason Rowland:And what kind of impact is that going to have on cross border shipping costs, Customer experience like these are all, everything's tied to it, right?
Shane Bogdan:Oh, absolutely.
Jason Rowland:So how is that going to impact?
Shane Bogdan:Well, I think the number one Thing that we always talk about is how do you be proactive versus reactive in this? And when you talk about de minimis parcels, you talk about any inbound shipments.
You want to understand, well, what are the de minimis rules for those goods coming into a market or if you're shipping, what's the country of origin? Because country of origin is now more important than ever. That's where the tariff rates are derivative from.
And then the other part is about the compliance piece, understanding your HS codes. We, we call those the Rosetta stone of cross border trade. Yeah. The fingerprint of an item. I mean everything has its unique identifier.
Nick Agnetti:I love it.
Shane Bogdan:So you have all of those three pieces together. You need to do that with removal of the.
Understanding that with the removal of de minimis or just cross border trade as is right now, you have to be more proactive versus reactive. These changes aren't going to stop those customs descriptions.
Jason Rowland:And it's like in any other machine, right. If you have bad data going in, you're going to get bad data going out.
Shane Bogdan:So. Absolutely.
Jason Rowland:As customs enforcement authorities are looking more closely at item descriptions, matching it to an HS code and it's not like it was in the past where even if there was a little bit of discrepancy, maybe they would err on the side of allowing it through now they are no, the just code doesn't match your description.
Nick Agnetti:Let's take a not moving, let's take a quick. For the viewers and listeners. So it's really important for everybody when we're having this conversation, we're a little bit more well versed. Right.
,:Let's say you have an order, T shirt and shoes, two items that are going to be shipped to, let's just say France, okay.
And country of origin is United States, whatever it might be, what that means, what they're imposing is that for the T shirt you're going to get a three euro duty. For the shoes, you're going to get a three euro duty.
For the T shirt, you're going to get a €2 processing or handling fee and that could change based on the country or the member state it's going to. And then for the shoes, 2 Euro processing fee. So you're looking at.
Just for the T shirt and shoes, without your shipping costs, without any VAT, you're looking at €10 right there. Just to get that right Just now.
Shane Bogdan:Cross border, you got to talk about the revenue though that these countries are creating are getting. I mean the U.S. i don't really want to talk about it, but I know we can talk the US if you like stats.
u. So I think the stat was in:You talk about that section 232s on steel and aluminum, all of the IEPA tariffs, et cetera. So now you have these other markets also looking and saying, okay, well look at how much revenue is also coming in.
We're protecting some of our merchants or retailers, but we're also collecting this additional revenue that's out there.
Nick Agnetti:So can you just clarify CBP real quick?
Shane Bogdan:Yeah, yeah. Customs Border Protection Agency.
Nick Agnetti:Perfect.
Shane Bogdan:Yeah, yeah.
Nick Agnetti:Part two of your question is how will this impact cross border logistics, shipping costs and customer experience, these EU de minimis changes because it really ties to.
Jason Rowland:Everything because every aspect of that, that business is now.
Nick Agnetti:What are your thoughts on that?
Shane Bogdan:Yeah, I mean I think, you know, I've been in the cross border space for 15 plus years and we worked with a lot of retailers in former life.
The number one thing that was most impactful was ensuring, you know, if these goods are no longer going to be duty free, you're going to want to make sure that you start educating what a duty is up to your consumers and calculating that at checkout. The number one driver of card abandonment is not displaying duties and taxes and having clear transparent pricing out there.
So you're going to want to put that out there and make sure that when that parcel gets to Mr. Foreign Doorstep, they're not going to get hit because it was a DDU delivery duty unpaid for those that don't know and they start getting hit with additional fees. Yeah.
Nick Agnetti:What are some of Avalara's customers doing to actively reevaluate and like their supply chains to reduce the tariff exposure, mitigate compliance risk, those things.
Shane Bogdan:Yeah. So again, going back to the whole how do you be proactive versus reactive in these instances?
So we're always talking, you know, if you are, you know, we work with a slew of businesses from some of the largest marketplaces out there, e commerce platforms, even down to the, onto the government side of things.
Nick Agnetti:Okay.
Shane Bogdan:The number one thing is, you know, again, understanding what are the codes on all those goods that you have within your catalog and then understanding what are the duty rates applied to those based upon the country of origin information.
So maintaining a record set of all of that data is so critically important because you take all those facets together, you can then understand we've been calling it really tariff modeling. Okay. Now I've been importing most majority of my goods for the past 15 years from China.
Now what other market should I be looking at if the tariff rate is above 30% should I be looking at Vietnam? Other markets. And really that's how they're starting to look at things of what we've been calling tariff modeling.
This something you guys, we absolutely help out with this. So we don't, we don't do anything in relation to the shipping logistics.
Nick Agnetti:Yep.
Shane Bogdan:We help kind of provide that more guided insights in terms of what are the HS classification codes on importing those markets? What are the additional duties out there? What are other restrictions and regulations you should be aware of?
Also if you're importing those from other markets as well, again, it goes back to that how do you be proactive versus reactive on that front and having that information ahead of time to make a decision.
Nick Agnetti: Super important for: Shane Bogdan:Yeah.
Nick Agnetti:Shane Avalara Trade and Tariff Tuesday is their podcast to help you guys get a little bit more knowledgeable on some of these topics. And thank you so much for joining.
Shane Bogdan:Thank you for joining. Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks all.
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