Analyst: US Customs Outage Might Be a 'Strategic Smoke Screen'

On April 12th: Institutional analysts claimed that the recent outage of the U.S. Customs might be much more than a mere software failure. The so-called "failure" explanation might be a strategic smokescreen. The goal is not to fix a faulty system but to buy time during a period of high-risk global trade and capital flow adjustments. With the shockwave caused by Trump's tariff measures reverberating through the global supply chain, the sudden "failure" resulting in a pause in tariff data processing conveniently enables key stakeholders such as clearinghouses, freight forwarders, the U.S. Treasury, and Customs to pause and reset pricing and arrangements before any new rates can be enforced. This may also be a form of information disruption similar to a brief wartime fog of war strategy. By freezing tariff waiver tracking and reducing transparency on who is granted waivers and who isn't, this provides the U.S. executive branch and Treasury with some relatively quiet time (hours or days) to assess market reactions and intervene if necessary without having their actions exposed in headlines. This can be regarded as a proactive firewall against a liquidity crisis or geopolitical panic rather than a systemic failure. (Jinse)