Tariffs didn’t bring manufacturing jobs back to the US
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Hello, and welcome to Decoder. I'm Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today I'm talking with Evan Smith, the co-founder and CEO of Altona, a company that develops software tools to manage big, messy supply chain networks around the world. We last had Evan on in early 2025 to talk about how Trump's first few waves of tariffs were starting to affect global trade, and what patterns Altona was seeing in all that macro-level data about shipping and trade. It was a very illuminating and occasionally alarming chat. Evan and I got into the existential weeds of international relations and economics almost immediately. It's among my favorite episodes of Decoder, and it's a deep introduction into what Altona does, if you're interested.
We'll drop a link in the show notes. But now it's a year and a half later, and global trade is somehow even more chaotic than it was the last time Evan and I talked. And as you'll hear, we jumped right back into the weeds of international relations yet again. On top of that, developments in agentic AI have changed the very nature of what it means to run a software company. It's changed what Altona can do. But like every other software company, it's also changed how Altona can do it, how it builds software. You'll hear Evan describe how AI is changing how the company builds software for a very demanding set of clients that manages billions in international trade. and how AI is also causing internal debates about how that software should be built and tested.
And of course, the things Altona needs to do are also changing more or less daily. Trade policy is changing rapidly around the world, but likely nowhere faster than here in the United States. Between the Trump administration's whack-a-mole tariff policies and the war in Iran, it is pretty hard to keep up with the current rules. That's where software like Altona comes in, and all that data pouring in from around the world gives Evan a very high-level view of what's actually happening. All those tariffs, for example, were supposed to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States. So I asked Evan directly, did it happen? Spoiler alert, you will not be surprised to hear him say no, although some of the ways companies and businesses have gotten around those rules are pretty surprising.
And while it's clear that the world still relies on global supply chains, the pressure being placed on economic choke points like the Strait of Hormuz is going to get higher than ever. There's a lot going on in this episode, as you will quickly be able to tell, Evan and I really enjoy talking to each other. Okay, Altona CEO Evan Smith, here we go.
Evan Smith, you're the co-founder and CEO of Altona. Welcome back to Decoder.
Yeah, it's good to be here again. Thanks for having me.
Yeah, I was looking over our last interview from about a year and a half ago, and boy, we got straight into the existential weeds of what it means to run the global economy and what was changing. The thing that strikes me just about the past year and a half The last time you were on the show, some of this stuff was theoretical, right? You founded Altona on the idea that globalization as we knew it, what you call globalization 1.0, was going to come to an end and it was going to get more complicated and the world needed software to solve it. The rubber has hit the road.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–3:50
2
What does Altana do to map and manage global supply chains?
3:50–36:54
3
How is agentic AI changing how Altana builds and ships software?
36:54–55:28
4
How does Altana use AI to automate customs brokerage and reduce border friction?
55:28–1:10:56
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Decoder with Nilay Patel
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