Lara GuevaraSupply Chain expert (Product and Service)

Margins Down? Do These 3 Checks

4 May 2026 · 1 min

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Lara Guevara walks through three checks to protect margins from tariffs: recalculate landed costs with current duty rates, test contribution margins on your top three SKUs, and verify HTS codes for China-sourced goods. Misclassification alone can swing duty costs dramatically.

Chapters

There are 3 things you can do right now to protect margin against tariff. Not next quarter, right now. 1. Rebuild your landed cost with actual current duty rates, not last year's rate, not your supplier's estimate, your real rate verified with your customs broker this week. 2. Identify your top 3 SKUs by volume, run the contribution margin test on each one, then know which ones are viable and which ones are not. 3, if you are sourcing from China, know your HTS codes. Not the code your supplier gave you, a code you or your broker verified independently. One wrong code at 145% versus 30% is thousands of dollars per shipment. These are not big projects. There are 3 conversations: one with your customs broker, one with your ops team, and one with your CFO or finance person. The brands losing margin right now are not losing because of tariff. They are losing because they have not done this math yet.