Maneuvering through macroeconomic mayhem and tariff turbulence – executive summary

Introduction: current market uncertainty and volatility

The global IT landscape in 2025 is marked by significant macroeconomic volatility and geopolitical uncertainty. This report analyzes the impacts of these factors on IT suppliers and channel partners, highlighting key data points and strategies to navigate the turbulent environment.

Key challenges

• Geopolitical volatility: ranked as the top challenge by partners, geopolitical instability is profoundly affecting business operations. The sentiment around this issue has intensified, with partners increasingly concerned about meeting revenue targets amidst these uncertainties.
• Tariff turbulence: the unpredictable tariff landscape has created substantial uncertainty. Between February and April 2025, partners’ optimism regarding tariffs dropped significantly. The percentage of partners viewing tariffs as beneficial fell from 41% to 21%, while those seeing tariffs as disastrous increased from 17% to 26%.
• Economic instability: the global economy, particularly in the US, is experiencing unprecedented volatility. New tariff threats are driving up costs for key technologies, affecting both enterprise and SMB IT spending. This leads to order cancellations and delays, further straining partner revenue forecasts.

Impact on partner sentiments

• Growth expectations: partners expecting year-over-year growth in 2025 dropped by 33 percentage points from February to April 2025.

• Tariff sentiments: in the US, partners viewing tariffs as disastrous doubled from 19% to 38% between February and April 2025. Conversely, partners outside the US showed a smaller shift, with disaster sentiments remaining relatively stable.

Strategies for overcoming challenges

Flexibility and adaptability are the best approaches to overcoming economic instability. As a result, IT suppliers and partners are encouraged to:

• IT suppliers: establish manufacturing and assembly operations in tariff-neutral countries.
• Partners: develop multi-vendor relationships to ensure supply chain resilience and enable product multi-sourcing.
• Both: be transparent by communicating with partners and clients, respectively, about price increases linked directly to tariffs, allowing partners time to adjust their pricing models and clients time to adjust their budgets.

Workforce challenges

The labor market is under pressure, with significant job cuts in government sectors due to new policies. This is exacerbating the skills shortage and impacting workforce availability. IT suppliers and partners must:

• Create risk management plans with contingencies for various economic scenarios.
• Recruit and upskill workers from sectors most impacted by layoffs.
• Use automation and AI to improve efficiency, optimize business operations and offset potential supply chain cost increases.

Conclusion: overcoming instability through flexibility

The current macroeconomic instability demands that IT suppliers and partners rethink their strategies for growth and risk management. By embracing flexibility, regionalizing supply chains and focusing on advanced services, partners can navigate the turbulent environment and maintain a competitive edge. Suppliers treating channel partners as strategic value creators and partners moving beyond transactional sales to SaaS subscription-based models will be vital for resilience and success.