Entry Details

About the Entry

Category: 
Overall Excellence > Website of the Year

Title of entry: 
Tariffs, strikes and disruption: How Supply Chain Dive kept readers informed as Trump remade global trade

Issue or Publication date:
3/28/2025, 4/25/2025, 8/5/2025, 4/16/2025, 8/19/2025, 3/12/2025, 10/24/2025, 3/19/2025, 10/23/2025, 12/22/2025

Publication name: 
Supply Chain Dive

View Website home page:
https://www.supplychaindive.com/

Entry URLs

Entry Essay: 
Supply chain managers faced a turbulent year as the White House changed the rules of global trade through an avalanche of tariffs and shifts in logistics networks. Amid the chaos, Supply Chain Dive tapped every tool at our disposal to provide readers with news and actionable insights.

We designed news trackers and data lookup tools. We crafted legal explainers and advice-focused headlines. We interviewed countless sources, on- and off-the-record, who helped us consistently explain why the latest news developments mattered.

To earn the Website of the Year recognition, our examples showcase our quality reporting, editing and design that collectively made SupplyChainDive.com a resource for supply chain managers. Web traffic grew by over 2 million views in 2025, a 60% year-over-year increase. Similarly, executive readership doubled. And the website remains the #1 source on Google for "supply chain news."

To showcase our service-oriented approach to journalism, many of our top-performing stories had display copy that directly addressed readers' questions. Managing Editor Edwin Lopez wrote "What does the US import from China?" in the wake of an escalating trade war between the two countries that threatened to nearly double import costs. At the time, our readers wondered which goods could realistically be sourced elsewhere, so Lopez included a tool for readers to look up China's market share for many products.

As part of a trade data series, Lopez also analyzed eight federal datasets and documents, then developed three tools for readers to assess how costs could change, one import country at a time. The visual story illustrated August's tariff hikes with an interactive map, a searchable tariff list by trade balance and a comparison chart showing the difference between the initial tariffs proposed in April and what would actually go into effect on Aug. 7.

Similarly, when the legality of certain tariffs came into question, Senior Editor Phil Neuffer interviewed lawyers to explain what could happen if the Supreme Court ruled that Trump's specific use of tariffs was illegal. His story, "What shippers need to know about potential tariff refunds,” navigates the uncertainty inherent in court cases while directly addressing open questions on what readers could expect if the administration had to return tariff income.

Senior Reporter Max Garland helped readers handle the sudden demise of the “de minimis exemption.” The rule that allowed sub-$800 imports to enter the U.S. duty and tax free had faced scrutiny for years and was supposed to sunset in July 2027, but the White House moved up the date to August 2025. Garland’s wide-ranging overview leaned on more than a year of reporting on the subject to give practical advice on new rules of trade, potential shipping delays and pricing pressures.

That story, like Garland's story on USPS privatization and Contributor Bill Stephen's story on how a rail merger could affect shippers, exemplifies how our website mixes deep technical knowledge with good design and colloquial story framing to simplify complex topics for readers.