In the early part of my career I sourced automotive parts of from Japan to the UK.

The biggest cost and issue wasn't the tarrif.

But the fact that Japan was thousands of miles away and 4-6 weeks by sea.

When preparing something for 6 week on the sea it needs a whole lot of extra packaging and protection than something that will spend 36 hour on an truck from Poland.

You also need to to invest in a repack/wash facility at your factory, more storage space.

Then the cost of capital locked up in material on the water..

All makes tarrifs insignificant.

So basically you don't sources from the other side of the world unless you have no choice.

The first question you ask your Japanese supplier is.. "what are your plans for a European plant".

Your purchasing team hate you and ask you constantly.. "are you aboslutly sure no one else closer can make it to your specification".

So, basically knocking a few % off of tarrifs isn't likely to make much difference to anything at all really.

Providing services over a long distance is more expensive, engineers in the UK working with teams in China/Japan you need to have them working on shifted time zones.. This costs more and means that those engineers are dedicated to a single project/customer. You lose flexibility.

Just to add some details to that first point.

If you have a $200 part that goes into an engine in Europe... At 300k units a year.

At any one time you have 35k parts in transit. That's $7 million of working capital permanently tied up on the water. https://twitter.com/chrismiller_uk/status/1355812223520747521?s=19