You Either Love Or Hate Unilateral Johnny

How do we see tariffs? Some of us are taking some bets and love what is happening right now.  Others are just confused, and don't have control.  I wanted to question my point of view, and clarity. Are we blind to something we think we see clearly?

Markets aren’t reacting to tariffs. They’re reacting to the structure that lets one person set global economic voltage without warning. The fix isn’t just in Washington — it’s in the design of your own business wiring. Companies that know how to read field polarity, reduce unnecessary drag, and build resilience through recognition will outperform in chaotic environments. Because when everyone else is waiting for clarity, they’re still moving.

I used the term Unilateral Johnny for years to describe a manager who uses any rule possible to achieve their objective without having support from their whole organization. Tariffs aren’t the real problem. Unilateral decision-making is. When one person can change the rules for everyone — without notice or checks — the field destabilizes. Markets don’t crash on policy; they crash on circuit uncertainty. That’s a design flaw.

In the U.S., we like to think our economic system is stable because it's rule-based. Trade policy is supposed to go through Congress. That gives businesses a framework — a kind of electrical circuit with known inputs and expected current flow. But there's a hidden switch in the wiring: a decades-old rule that allows the President to unilaterally impose tariffs under the vague banner of “national security.”

The issue this week wasn’t that a tariff happened. It’s that it could happen — instantly, without consensus — and every company is forced to react to a field that just flipped polarity. That’s not just political theory. It’s operational drag. And it’s costly.

So what should companies actually do about this? The answer isn’t lobbying harder or “waiting it out.” It’s rewiring how your organization handles policy volatility at the system level — and reducing the friction that builds up when the rules keep changing and no one knows who controls the current.

Model Your Flow — Not Just Your Spend

Imagine a mid-sized manufacturing company with a Tier 1 supplier in Korea and a secondary supplier in Ohio. On paper, the Korean option is 8% cheaper. So the procurement team builds a system optimized for cost, not resilience. Then a tariff is announced — or just rumored. That 8% advantage disappears, and the entire plan falls apart. Production slows, legal gets involved, sales start rewriting timelines.That’s a circuit collapse. And it’s not just about where the part comes from — it’s about how many steps you have to retrace once the field flips.

Smart companies are starting to ask a different question: not “Where’s the cheapest vendor?” but “Where’s the current flowing smoothly?” Model your suppliers, partners, and policies like an electrical circuit. Where are the bottlenecks? Where are the brittle nodes? Where is your company spending energy just to stay operational? It’s a mindset shift from cost efficiency to current efficiency.

Build Redundancy Where It Actually Matters

Now think about  a logistics department in a large technology company.   It has one deeply integrated platform partner that handles 90% of their customs clearance. Fast, affordable, optimized.

But after two near-misses with policy changes — one involving sudden import documentation changes, another tied to shifting country-of-origin requirements — they made a call: introduce a backup platform and train staff to switch workflows within 24 hours.

Yes, the second system cost more. Yes, it added training complexity. But when the next policy shift hit, they were the only mid-sized firm in their space that didn’t suffer a multi-week backlog. They weren’t trying to predict policy. They were reducing the energy loss from a polarity reversal. In uncertain systems, redundancy isn't waste — it's stability insurance.

Make Mutual Recognition a Strategic Asset

This one’s bigger than operations. It’s cultural. If your business only functions under the logic of one system — one country’s trade framework, one dominant contract model, one interpretation of risk — then volatility anywhere near that system hits your whole flow.

U.S.-based tech firms can build bilateral “trust pathways” with unions and small lenders in other countries. These aren't just MOUs. They are frameworks for how each group would define fair pricing, quality, and dispute resolution — regardless of whether national policies aligned. 

When the dollar shifts, or when a U.S. export standard changes, those relationships should hold if your business relationship has value for both sides. Why? Because they weren’t built on authority. They were built on recognition — mutual agreement on meaning and flow. You can’t stop the storm. But you can design your circuit so it doesn’t ground out every time it rains.

Train for Field Literacy — Not Just Risk Management

Your CFO can model financial risk. Can they model circuit drag? That’s the skill that matters now: seeing where policy volatility inserts friction into otherwise smooth business processes.

 I’m focused on drag.  I want all finance and operations leaders to shift their thinking  and start asking their team to track "hesitation points" — moments when people slow down, stall, or second-guess because they don’t trust the system will hold. Sometimes it’s a legal review. Sometimes it’s a delay in sourcing. Sometimes it's just a feeling that "this is going to change next quarter, so let’s wait."

Each hesitation point is a heat source. And most companies don’t track that heat. Train leaders to spot them. Give them permission to map not just what’s blocked — but why the blockage exists. Most of the time, it’s not the policy. It’s the possibility of the policy changing.