project44 broadened its service offerings last week with the introduction of a new Tariff Simulator. This innovative tool marked a departure from project44’s historical focus on visibility to a more comprehensive suite of shipment execution solutions under the company’s Movement Platform.
The launch of the Tariff Simulator was particularly timely, arriving on the heels of the expiration of numerous Section 301 exclusions, which left businesses grappling with increased tariff burdens on imports from China. The expiration meant firms dealing in electronics, industrial machinery, and solar equipment faced steep duty increases, and needed urgent tariff intelligence to navigate these challenges.
The Tariff Simulator, which project44 provides for free on its website, allowed businesses to calculate U.S. import duties and tariffs swiftly using HTS (Harmonized Tariff Schedule) codes. By inputting details such as country of origin, product value, and HTS codes, users can access real-time calculations of duties, an essential aid in understanding cost exposures and strategizing procurement and supply chain operations amidst tariff volatility.
Ellie Crist, Senior Director of Project Management at project44, outlined the impetus for creating the simulator, explaining that existing market solutions were either too fragmented or tailored for compliance specialists, making them inaccessible for buyers and planners who needed prompt cost insights.
“We saw teams at our customers making high-stakes sourcing and transportation decisions without a fast, trustworthy way to estimate duties at the SKU level,” Crist wrote in an email to FreightWaves. “We built Tariff Simulator to make duty estimates accurate and self-serve,” she wrote, emphasizing the tool’s design to cater broadly across the supply chain, not just compliance teams.
This new module was part of project44’s strategic transition towards incorporating comprehensive decision-making tools into their Movement Platform. project44 envisaged the Tariff Simulator as an entry point to the platform’s broader decisioning workflows, integrating seamlessly with various aspects of supply chain management.
As Crist noted, “Tariff costs are a critical component of supply chain intelligence,” revealing that the tool was conceived both as a standalone function and a part of a cohesive, AI-powered decision-making experience involving sourcing, procurement, and inventory decisions.
The Tariff Simulator was designed for diverse applications, including strategic sourcing, budget planning, and scenario modeling, enabling companies to proactively manage supplier comparisons and landed cost calculations before making logistical commitments. By supporting these crucial pre-booking and pre-shipment validations, project44 positioned its simulator as an indispensable asset for those looking to optimize their supply chain operations effectively.
The innovation was not just about augmenting project44’s current capabilities; it was a small step in p44’s quest to redefine its role from a provider of supply chain visibility to being a pivotal partner in shipment execution and cost management. The integration of the Tariff Simulator into the Movement platform meant that tariff intelligence could inform various layers of supply chain management, from routing decisions to carrier selection and cost optimization.
Looking forward, project44 plans to launch enhanced tariff analytics capabilities, potentially allowing clients to upload product catalogs for comprehensive tariff analysis, bridging gaps in procurement and sourcing strategies. This planned feature, which would require batch uploads, indicated a broader strategy to deepen integration into procurement and supply chain intelligence, part of a wider move towards Intelligent TMS, which project44 unveiled as part of its AI-driven solutions.
Crist emphasized the necessity for such advancements by pointing out the complexities that procurement teams face without trustworthy, rapid duty estimates, a challenge that project44’s Tariff Simulator aimed to address by leveraging agentic AI capabilities for automated HTS classification. The tool’s functionality is built with future versioning and enhancements in mind, ensuring it remains a useful component of project44’s decision intelligence suite, capable of adapting to future trade policy shifts and market changes.
Although at first glance this is a minor product release—a free feature on a public-facing website—it allows project44 not only to expand its value proposition but also to pave the way for future innovations in supply chain management.
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