Most conversations about nearshoring assume you're moving away from Chinese manufacturing. Kerim Kfuri, president and CEO of The Atlas Network, has a harder truth: a lot of "nearshoring" is just Chinese foreign direct investment building factories in Vietnam and Mexico. The geography changes. The supply chain dependencies don't necessarily change with it.

In this episode, recorded live on the expo floor at the Logistics World Summit in Mexico City, Kerim breaks down what 20 years of building end-to-end supply chains for small and mid-sized businesses has taught him — and what most operators still get wrong.

In this episode:

• How The Atlas Network manages the full supply chain lifecycle for SMBs, from product idea to inventory management, across a network of 2,000 vetted factories
• Why "nearshoring" in Vietnam and Mexico often means Chinese-owned factories with Chinese standardization — and why that matters for your tariff and sourcing strategy
• The US manufacturing reality: why technology (not policy) is the actual leveler, and why we can't snap our fingers and rebuild a workforce we stopped training decades ago
• Kerim's keynote framework from Logistics World: people, process, and innovation — and why "people" is the most undervalued of the three
• What Kerim (MIT degree in AI and Strategy) says you actually give up when you hand too much to AI: creativity, human factor, and the interpersonal relationships that drive real business
• The signal-versus-noise framework for entrepreneurs: how to identify the three things that must get done today and stop letting everything else win
• Why the most common thing Atlas Network hears from new clients is: "I wish we knew about you sooner"
• A bonus live interview with the founder of Logistics World Summit, who walked up mid-recording on the expo floor

Watch this episode on Youtube

Links & Resources:

• The Atlas Network
• Kerim's book and speaking website
• Blythe's Logistics World + Mexico City Recap

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