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Tariff Shocks and How to Cope (Commercial Vehicle Edition)

May 9, 2025
Understanding how these dynamics will play out is essential to identifying flexible strategic options.

In recent months, the commercial vehicle industry has found itself at the center of a shifting geopolitical chessboard. The election of President Donald Trump and the recent announcement of sweeping new tariff policies—followed by a 90-day pause—have thrown supply chains into uncertainty, disrupted investment planning and increased the cost of doing business.

For OEMs and suppliers alike, understanding how these dynamics will play out is essential to identifying flexible strategic options that enable long-term competitiveness.

Enter Game Theory

Game theory, the science of strategic interactions between stakeholders, provides a powerful lens to anticipate how players—governments, OEMs, and suppliers—will behave in complex, high-stakes environments.

At its core, each game’s outcome is based on three fundamental questions: Who are the players? What are their options? And what do they want? From there, game theory models how each actor is likely to respond to the choices of others, helping leaders "look around corners" and make better decisions in times of uncertainty.

About the Author

Alan Berger | Managing Partner, abcg AB

Alan Berger is managing partner at abcg AB, a consulting firm specializing in the commercial vehicle industry. Among other roles, Berger has served as chief technology officer for CNH Industrial and was senior vice president, technology, at Volvo Construction Equipment.

About the Author

John Jullens | Managing Partner, Arbalète LLC

John has more than 25 years of management consulting and industry experience in North America, Europe, and China.  He specializes in developing growth strategies for clients in the automotive and industrial manufacturing sectors, including demand-side transformation, new market entry, globalization/emerging markets, brand and customer strategies, organizational redesign, and M&A due diligence and post-merger integration.  He has published extensively on these topics for such leading publications as Harvard Business Review, Harvard Business Review China, CEIBS Business Review, and Strategy+Business.

About the Author

Marc S. Robinson | Principal, MSR Strategy

Marc S. Robinson, Ph.D., managing partner, Arbalète LLC, is an economist and strategist with more than 30 years of experience advising leaders in multi-national companies, governments, and non-profit organizations. He spent most of his career as an internal consultant for General Motors. He also served in the White House on the President’s Council of Economic Advisors and taught at UCLA and Stanford University. He and his colleague John Jullens publish the applied business strategy newsletter C-Suite.

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