DFMA: SHOULD COSTING
DFMA: PRODUCT SIMPLIFICATION
As we write this, the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down most of President Trump’s sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs in a landmark 6–3 ruling. Within hours, the President announced a new 10% global tariff under different legal authority. If you’re a manufacturer, you probably felt a brief moment of relief followed immediately by the familiar knot in your stomach.
Welcome to Year Two of the tariff era.
This article updates our original piece from April 2025, published just days after “Liberation Day.” Nearly a year later, the core message still holds — not because we can predict politics, but because DFMA (Design for Manufacture and Assembly) does not depend on who is in the White House or what the Supreme Court decides. It depends on physics, geometry, and common sense.
Below is what happened, what it means, and why DFMA is even more relevant now.
A Year of Whiplash: The Tariff Timeline
If you lived through it, you already know the feeling. Still, the condensed timeline makes one point painfully clear: no one could have planned around this.
Read that again: a sweeping tariff regime, a market crash, a pause, resumed tariffs, three court rulings, a Supreme Court decision, and a replacement tariff signed the same afternoon. Over $160 billion collected under a statute that was just declared unlawful.
If you built your strategy around predicting any of this, you lost. If you built it around DFMA, you’re still standing.
What Today’s Supreme Court Ruling Means (And Doesn’t)
Let’s be precise.
What the ruling does: The Court ruled that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not grant the President authority to impose tariffs. Chief Justice Roberts wrote that no president had ever used IEEPA this way before, and that the statute contains no reference to tariffs or duties. That invalidates the “Liberation Day” reciprocal tariffs and the fentanyl-related duties on China, Canada, and Mexico that were imposed under IEEPA.
What it does not do: It does not eliminate tariffs imposed under other statutes. Section 232 tariffs on metals and autos remain fully in place. And as today proved within hours, the administration can pivot to other legal pathways — Section 122 (temporary, up to 150 days) and Section 301 (investigation-driven, slower to land but potentially broad).
The refund question: The ruling also raises the prospect of over $160 billion in tariff refunds to importers — but the Court explicitly did not address how or when refunds would occur. Justice Kavanaugh, in dissent, called the refund process likely to be a “mess.” The administration has signaled it won’t volunteer them. Companies with complex, high-volume import operations could face years of litigation to recover overpaid duties.
Tariffs did not end today. They changed shape. The legal basis shifted. The rates will move again. But the underlying reality was reinforced, not resolved: trade policy is volatile, and your products still have to survive in that volatility.
The Past Year Proved DFMA Right
When we first wrote about tariffs in April 2025, we made a simple argument: DFMA is a tariff-resistant strategy because it reduces cost, simplifies supply chains, and makes production location-agnostic. The last year validated that in three specific ways.
Tariffs Punished Complexity
Manufacturers with sprawling, multi-country supply chains suffered most. Each component brings its own HTS classification, its own duty exposure under each tariff program, its own paperwork and broker fees, its own shipment and delay risk. Many companies discovered that the administrative cost of navigating constant tariff changes was nearly as painful as the tariff itself.
DFMA’s first principle is the antidote: reduce part count. Fewer parts means fewer tariff line items, fewer imports, fewer shipments, fewer compliance headaches, and fewer opportunities for a single missing component to stop an entire assembly line.
Reshoring Without DFMA Rarely Worked
Tariffs were sold as a reshoring lever. The results told a different story. U.S. manufacturing lost roughly 70,000 jobs between April and December 2025. The ISM manufacturing index spent most of the year in contraction. Research from Washington University found that tariffs at the raw material and component level actually discourage reshoring by raising costs for domestic manufacturers who still depend on imported inputs.
You cannot “reshore” a product whose design depends on a long list of imported inputs, specialized subcomponents with no domestic supply base, high part counts with fragile supplier qualification, and complex assembly that requires niche labor or tooling. Even if you move final assembly to the U.S., the imported components still carry the cost hit.
DFMA changes this equation by attacking the biggest cost driver: parts. According to data from Boothroyd Dewhurst, parts and materials account for roughly 72% of a product’s total cost, while direct assembly labor is only about 4%. When DFMA cuts part count by half, it reduces imported dependency and makes domestic production more economically feasible — not because labor got cheaper, but because you eliminated the parts that were dragging cost up in the first place.
Flexibility Separated Winners from Losers
The last year rewarded companies that could pivot: qualify alternate suppliers faster, adjust sourcing regions, shift production between plants, redesign around standard components. Companies locked into complex designs with specialized assembly couldn’t move without a full redesign project.
DFMA-optimized products tend to be simpler to assemble, less reliant on unique parts, more modular, and more tolerant of supplier substitutions. That design portability creates real geographic agility. You can shift production with less pain because the product is not fighting you.
Why DFMA Matters Even More Now
Today’s ruling did not simplify the tariff environment. It fragmented it.
Instead of one sweeping regime under IEEPA, manufacturers now face a patchwork: Section 232 tariffs (persistent, politically sensitive), Section 122 tariffs (temporary, limited to 150 days unless Congress acts), Section 301 actions (targeted, investigation-based, slower to land), and potential Congressional legislation (harder to predict than any of the above). Each program has different rates, different timelines, and different legal vulnerabilities.
For manufacturers, a patchwork can be harder to navigate than a single bad policy, because planning becomes a constant moving target. That is exactly why DFMA’s value increases in this environment.
Fewer parts means fewer tariff classifications. Every part has an HTS code. Every HTS code carries different rates under different programs. A 200-part bill of materials can span dozens of HTS categories across multiple tariff regimes. Cut that to 80 parts through DFMA and you shrink your exposure surface, your compliance workload, your freight and inventory complexity, and your vulnerability to policy changes you cannot control.
Lower cost creates tariff absorption capacity. DFMA frequently reduces manufacturing cost by 20–50% through function integration, part elimination, assembly simplification, and fastener reduction. When your product costs 40% less to build, a 10% tariff on a subset of remaining imports is a manageable line item rather than a margin killer. You cannot control tariffs, but you can control your ability to absorb shocks.
Design portability makes location a lever, not a prison. Manufacturing cost is largely locked in early — one study found 75–90% of cost is determined by design decisions in the first 5–10% of development. If those decisions prioritize simple assembly, standard components, modularity, and reduced unique parts, you can manufacture in multiple regions with far less disruption. When Section 122 tariffs expire in July and get replaced by Section 301 actions targeting specific countries, your product doesn’t require a redesign to move. That optionality is no longer theoretical. It is a survival skill.
Simplified supply chains reduce refund exposure. The $160+ billion in IEEPA tariff collections now sits in legal limbo. Companies with complex, high-volume import operations face the prospect of lengthy litigation to recover overpaid duties — with no guarantee of success. Companies whose DFMA-simplified products required fewer imported components paid less in tariffs to begin with, have fewer transactions to reconcile, and face less financial exposure regardless of how the refund process plays out. The simplest way to handle a tariff refund dispute is to have paid less in the first place.
The Engineering Fundamentals Have Not Changed
The politics move. The physics do not.
These gains are structural. They persist regardless of tariff rates, trade deals, court rulings, or election cycles. They held when Whirlpool cut part count by 29% and assembly time by 26%. They held when IGT saved 40% on parts and assembly costs. They held when Motorola reduced parts by 36% in 90 days. The engineering doesn’t care about politics.
What to Do Now
Today’s ruling may create a temporary window where some tariff pressure shifts before new actions fully take hold. Smart manufacturers will use that window to act, not relax.
Audit One Product for DFMA Opportunity
Pick your highest-volume or most tariff-exposed product and run a DFMA analysis. You will often find 30–50% of parts that can be eliminated through function integration and assembly simplification. Every part you remove is a part that cannot be tariffed, expedited, reclassified, delayed, or backordered.
Map Tariff Exposure by Component
Tie every BOM line item to its HTS code, current duty rates under active programs, country of origin and supplier dependency, and shipment frequency. Then model the DFMA version of that product with the collapsed BOM. The math usually gets compelling fast.
Design for Geographic Flexibility
If your product requires specialized tooling, unique suppliers, or high-skill assembly, you are geographically locked. DFMA’s focus on self-aligning features, part symmetry, standard fasteners, and simplified joining creates products that can be built in more than one place with less transition cost.
Start Earlier Than You Think
DFMA delivers the most value during concept and preliminary design, before tooling is cut and sourcing is frozen. If you are developing products in 2026, bake DFMA into the workflow from day one. If you are maintaining mature products, a DFMA-driven redesign can often pay back in a single production cycle.
Control What You Can Control
You cannot control what the Supreme Court rules. You cannot control what the President signs. You cannot control whether Congress extends a temporary tariff in 150 days, or whether new investigations produce new duties by year’s end. You cannot control whether $160 billion in tariff refunds ever reaches the importers who paid them.
But you can control how your products are designed.
You can reduce part counts. You can simplify assembly. You can cut cost where it actually lives. You can create products that are lean, flexible, and resilient to whatever the global trade environment throws at them.
Tariffs will keep changing. Your products do not have to suffer for it.
