Management decisions threaten the entire electronics industry.Tariffs always have an effect. It’s usually not the intended one.

Tell me it isn’t so. Tell me we are not going back, excuse me, that’s backwards, to when I began my career in the 1970s! As you age, you remember the way things were, for better or worse. And in my case, add being a student of history, albeit a casual one, as well as a selective packrat of industry periodicals. Together, looking at the current state of the global world of technology, the trajectory certainly appears less forward and more backward.

In the 1970s, America was an epicenter of manufacturing, including electronics and technology. Then Japan and Taiwan began to outperform the US in terms of quality and value. At that time, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand and even China were not yet mainstream economic engines. The time-to-market for new technology stretched years. While innovation flourished, double-digit inflation hindered any single company or nation from profitably funding significant technological advancements.

Business executives are resourceful, however. Western countries, led by the US, began to study how Japan was transforming its economy into one that produced cost-effective and high-quality products. One of the most notable observations was how Japanese companies began to source components and sub-systems from lower-cost countries. Even more importantly, Japanese companies invested in building manufacturing facilities in lower-cost countries and taught the local workforce how to produce the quality products the Japanese required. By observing and copying the successes that Japan and Taiwan enjoyed, the modern global supply chain came to life.

Since the 1970s, companies around the world have developed global supply chains for virtually all products. These supply chains offer several advantages, including the ability to collaborate across different parts of the world, which creates a 24/7 workforce. This collaboration has significantly reduced time-to-market to months from years. Additionally, when product development teams are international, they account for the tastes, needs and unique preferences of consumers worldwide, resulting in products that truly appeal to a global audience. These two examples have dramatically reduced cost-to-market, while enhancing global product demand to enable scalable manufacturing, resulting in much lower unit costs. In short, a win-win-win for consumers, companies and countries!

Even in successful endeavors, however, imbalances can occur. Currently, certain specific technologies and industries need a better mix of imports versus domestic production. When we identify such imbalances, focusing on them has proven successful in the past. The CHIPS and Science Act, enacted by Congress in 2022, serves as an example of this approach to rebalancing critical needs. By implementing legislation similar to the Chips Act, rebalancing can take place without destroying the long-evolved and highly efficient global economy.

But now, these highly efficient supply chains that support global economies face threats from tariffs that one leader believes will revitalize its manufacturing industries. Regrettably, bulk, across-the-board tariffs have never worked. Worse, the taxing country loses more than the nation it taxes. The Smoot-Hartley Tariff Act, which the US Congress enacted in 1930, led to the collapse of international trade, prolonged the Great Depression and served as a catalyst for World War II.

Over the years, selective tariffs have worked, but only when implemented with the precision of a surgeon, not a lumberjack. Even then, free-trade biases have discouraged tariffs. Two decades ago, the June 2004 IPC Review recapped the IPC Capitol Hill Day, where Rep. Donald Manzullo (R-IL), chairman of the Committee on Small Business, stated, “Tariffs don’t work.” He discussed how tariffs raise costs and reduce supply of impacted materials. The results of 1930 and 2004 are harbingers of what could come.

Yet one government’s worldview may regrettably take everyone on a long, torturous journey back to the 1970s. Like a bumpy rollercoaster ride, markets will reel, shortages of critical items will develop and many common consumer products will disappear from store shelves. Costs for everyone will rise and time to market will equally suffer.

If the global industry has patience and sets a positive example by encouraging collaboration, we may be able to mitigate the disruptions that history suggests are likely to occur. Hopefully, we will wake up from a bad dream and resume thriving as part of a highly efficient global economy in 2025, not the 1970s!

Peter Bigelow has more than 30 years’ experience as a PCB executive, most recently as president of FTG Circuits Haverhill; peterbigelow@msn.com.

Management decisions threaten the entire electronics industry.

The simple chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Chains have been used for centuries to connect and secure everything from ships to anchors during a storm, large and heavy payloads onto trailers for transport, and more recently, businesses to customers and suppliers for commerce.

Chains are subject to many challenges. Rust and corrosion are the most obvious potential causes of failure for metal chains. Temperature and chemical exposure can cause failure with plastic chains, and politics, as well as epidemics, can test the strength and tenacity of the chains of commerce. And human error challenges each and every one.

Global supply chains have been created, nurtured and evolved into what could best be characterized as one of the most efficient systems ever utilized in the history of manufacturing. The global supply chain that supports our electronics industry in particular has enabled amazingly cost-effective production of high-quality materials, supplies, sub-assemblies and finished products, enabling much higher overall value. The scope of the supply chain is extensive, touching everything from raw materials to consumer products to industrial equipment, and includes not just finished products but also the spare and replacement parts necessary to keep everything functioning long after a product goes into service. This continues to take place despite the pulling, twisting, stressing and testing of each chain’s links over and over again over the past decades.

Industry-wide security efforts could benefit from a smaller, more agile approach.

One of the major trends, or more specifically, major needs, over the past decade is the quest to beef up security methods and protocols to protect intellectual property (IP) and secure the numerous long and global supply chains. As with any emerging trend, opinions are varied as to exactly what “security” means, as well as how to best define “supply chain.”

Over the past quarter century, the global supply chain has grown, prospered and become increasingly complex. The flourishing of such a complex and efficient manufacturing environment has required deployment of advanced technology – not just in how product is manufactured on the production floor but also in how data are transferred. Data include everything from Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) to all the myriad details required to logistically make sure items and sub-items are shipped and arrive in time – anywhere in the world – at the required location for assembly. This is where the concept of security gets interesting.

Worldwide collaboration still has a place in the printed circuit board supply chain.

As time marches on and technology, as well as economic and geopolitical events, change and evolve, one thing is as true today as it was decades ago: It is still a small world, after all!

Being in a technology-driven industry, I often marvel at how small refinements to materials, processes and equipment, together, over time, are catalysts that enable truly significant technological advances. One person’s – or team’s – brilliant and possibly radical idea can become reality only when the little things are done in the way of refining existing materials, tweaking known processes and tuning the equipment necessary for its manufacturing. In almost all cases I can think of, the hype over so-called “game-changing” materials or processes, was for naught; the game did not change.