Amazon.com Inc. has canceled orders for multiple products made in China and other Asian countries, according to a document reviewed by Bloomberg and people familiar with the matter, suggesting the company is reducing its exposure to tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump.

The orders for beach chairs, scooters, air conditioners and other merchandise from multiple Amazon vendors were halted after Trump’s April 2 announcement that he planned to levy tariffs on more than 180 countries and territories, including China, Vietnam and Thailand, the people said. The timing of the cancellations, which had no warning, led the vendors to suspect it was a response to tariffs.

An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment. The company identified international trade disputes as a risk factor in its annual report released in February. “China-based suppliers provide significant portions of our components and finished goods,” the company said.

It’s unclear how widespread the cancellations are and how many types of merchandise they affect.

One vendor who has been selling beach chairs made in China to Amazon for more than a decade received an email from the company last week that said it was canceling some purchase orders it placed “in error“ and instructed the vendor not to ship them. The email, which was reviewed by Bloomberg, didn’t mention tariffs.

The vendor said the $500,000 wholesale order was nixed after the chairs had already been manufactured, leaving this person on the hook to pay the factory and find other buyers. The vendor, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from Amazon, said the company had never canceled one of its orders in such as manner.

Scott Miller, a former Amazon vendor manager who now works as an e-commerce consultant, said Amazon canceled orders for merchandise made in China and other Asian countries from several of his clients. The cancellations came without warning, he said, and could force vendors to renegotiate terms with the e-commerce company.

“Amazon really holds all of the cards,” said Miller, founder and CEO of pdPlus in Minneapolis. “The only real recourse vendors have is to either sell this inventory in other countries at lower margins or try to work with other retailers.”

The beach chair vendor and Miller said Amazon cancelled “direct import orders,” a process in which Amazon buys inventory wholesale in the country in which it is made and ships the products to its warehouses in the United States. Amazon serves as the importer of record for the orders, which means it pays tariffs when the products reach US ports. 

Amazon has been importing items this way for years as a way to reduce costs since Amazon can often use bulk shipping rates to import items at lower costs than vendors. Canceling those orders puts the tariff exposure back on vendors if they import merchandise to the US by other means.

Items Amazon buys directly from vendors account for about 40% of the products sold on its website. The rest of the company’s sales are made by independent merchants who essentially rent digital shelf space from Amazon, paying the company commissions and fees for logistics and advertising.

Trump’s tariffs have rattled global markets. Many businesses are raising prices, stoking fears of a recession. On Tuesday, Robert W. Baird & Co. Inc. reduced its 2025 revenue forecast for Amazon, citing the effects of tariffs in a research note. The company’s shares have fallen about 21% this year, compared with the S&P 500’s 15% slump.

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The global trade ecosystem has been overturned. President Donald Trump imposed 104% tariffs on China on Wednesday, a week after levying a host of tariffs ranging from a minimum of 10% on imports generally to 20% on EU goods and 46% on ones from Vietnam—levels not seen for nearly a century. China quickly retaliated, announcing today it will raise tariffs on American goods to 84% starting tomorrow.

With retaliatory actions likely from other trade partners and U.S. threats to match any of those tariffs, we’re facing what promises to be a prolonged period of trade instability that few organizations are prepared to weather.

Many executives are justifiably worried about the direct financial implications—the immediate cost increases on imported materials and components from direct suppliers. However, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There will be a cascading effect as tariffs impact second- and third-tier vendors as well. Businesses need to plan for not just increased costs for their business, but also lean inventories and the potential for failing due to costly errors, penalties, and reputational damage due to inaccurate reporting or regulatory non-compliance. The complexities introduced by tariffs demand a fundamental shift in how businesses approach supply chain management.

The permacrisis era

Tariffs are just the most recent example illustrating the uncertainty about economic policy and extreme volatility of business risks and the challenges they pose. I’ve written extensively about permacrisis—that perpetual state of navigating simultaneous and ongoing crises—and how our conventional risk management frameworks were simply not architected for today’s complicated trade realities. These new tariffs introduce specialized regulatory complexities that few organizations possess the internal expertise to navigate successfully.

The efficiency-driven supply chain models that dominated pre-pandemic thinking have left businesses particularly vulnerable. The pursuit of “lean” operations—minimal inventory buffers and concentrated supplier relationships—has created structural fragilities that tariff disruptions will mercilessly expose. What once represented operational excellence now constitutes existential vulnerability.

Anticipate the damage

For weeks, executives have been gathering in board rooms scrambling to understand what the tariff “end game” will look like and what the tariffs mean for them. The tariffs may feel like a shock to the system for executives, but I would advise against being blinded by the initial flash of lightning from the tariff news. Executives need to anticipate what might come next—such as potential rollbacks, and more likely, retaliatory moves. Planning for various scenarios and quantifying the financial and operational impact of each will help them understand potential outcomes and develop response and contingency strategies.

Address your supply chain and compliance

Next, you want to be prepared to address the repercussions that may come down the pipeline from these new tariffs. This will involve conducting a fundamental reassessment of your supply chain strategy, beginning with comprehensive network mapping. This means looking beyond your immediate suppliers to understand the complete ecosystem supporting your business operations. Which of your suppliers’ suppliers face direct tariff exposure? How will these costs transmit through your supply network? Where are the critical chokepoints? Real-time visibility and data-driven decisions are critical for survival.

Equally crucial is developing specialized expertise in tariff classification and customs compliance. The complexity of international trade regulations creates significant exposure to compliance failures, misclassifications, and documentation errors—each carrying substantial financial penalties. This expertise gap must be addressed, whether through internal capability building or strategic external partnerships.

Organizations must also embrace scenario planning with renewed vigor. Modeling various tariff escalation scenarios and their operational impacts provides critical insights for strategic decision-making. What happens when key components face 25% cost increases? How will currency fluctuations compound these effects? Which alternative sourcing strategies might mitigate these impacts?

Build operational resilience

When you have done the assessments of your company’s downstream risks from the tariffs, and taken action to minimize the immediate effects, you should take action to build operational resilience to protect the business when other operational threats arise. There are a number of tactical measures that companies should adopt to increase resilience for the future, specifically:

• Diversify suppliers, increase inventory buffers, and enact robust contingency plans
• Conduct comprehensive contract reviews with suppliers and customers to understand tariff-related cost allocation mechanisms and renegotiation opportunities
• Explore specialized trade programs including Foreign Trade Zones, duty drawback provisions, and bonded warehousing arrangements that may provide meaningful relief
• Reconsider inventory policies for critical components, potentially increasing strategic buffer stocks
• Implement advanced supply chain visibility technologies enabling real-time monitoring and rapid response capabilities
• Investigate product engineering modifications that reduce dependence on heavily tariffed products

The organizations that successfully navigate this environment will be those recognizing that tariffs aren’t merely a finance department concern—they represent a fundamental enterprise risk requiring coordinated cross-functional responses. Legal, supply chain, finance, enterprise risk management, internal audit, and operations must collaborate with unprecedented alignment. Adopting a connected risk approach will break down siloes and enable more successful problem solving and risk mitigation.

Prepare for the future global trade landscape

We’re in the early stages of unprecedented uncertainty with regard to global trade, what I’m calling the “fog of tariff wars.” Forward-thinking leaders should prepare for a future where global commerce increasingly fragments along geopolitical fault lines.

The competitive advantage will belong to organizations that embed adaptability into their operational DNA. This means developing not just responses to today’s tariffs but building systems capable of rapidly reconfiguring as conditions evolve. It requires viewing your supply chain not as a fixed asset but as a dynamic network that can flex and transform in response to shifting trade realities.

Businesses are not just navigating economic uncertainty, they’re facing a systemic overhaul of how goods move across borders. Companies that move with urgency to understand and mitigate the risks and adapt their organizations to the new reality will find strategic advantages where others perceive only disruption. The time to act isn’t tomorrow—it’s right now, before the full impact of the new tariffs reshapes the global trade landscape.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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• The White House is refusing to answer questions from reporters with preferred pronouns in email signatures. Several officials have cited policy in doing so, but it’s unclear if that is personal or official. Reporters from The New York Times and other outlets have experienced the snubs.

The Associated Press isn’t the only news outlet that is having trouble getting access to the Trump administration.

The White House is refusing to answer emails from reporters who list their preferred pronouns in their email signatures, according to a report from The New York Times.

Several officials have responded to queries with non-answers, citing the pronoun addition to signatures.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, wrote a reporter saying “As a matter of policy, we do not respond to reporters with pronouns in their bios.” DOGE senior advisor Katie Miller, in reply to another reporter’s question, wrote “As a matter of policy, I don’t respond to people who use pronouns in their signatures as it shows they ignore scientific realities and therefore ignore facts,” adding in a separate email, “this applies to all reporters who have pronouns in their signature.”

Whether that is an official White House policy or a personal one of those officials is unclear. Other outlets beyond the Times say they’ve experienced the same non-responses when pronouns were added to signatures.

The White House administration has been particularly focused on transgender-related policy announcements since January. Donald Trump has issued executive orders declaring there are two sexes and barring transgender people from serving in the military and from competing in women’s sports.

“Any reporter who chooses to put their preferred pronouns in their bio clearly does not care about biological reality or truth and therefore cannot be trusted to write an honest story,” Leavitt told the Times in an email.

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