# Nick Vyas

Nick Vyas is a supply-chain educator and commentator who explains how trade policy, geopolitics, technology, and infrastructure shape global supply chains. Their work includes leading supply-chain education and events at USC, hosting Supply Chain Demystified, and discussing industry issues with practitioners.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/nick-vyas/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thevyasusc
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbE6BDq0YN_2sdCTzYyq34Q
- Topics: artificial-intelligence, supply-chain, cybersecurity, ai-adoption, workforce-development, supply-chain-resilience
- Based on 19 dated posts, latest 2026-10-05

## Summary

Most useful for keynotes or moderated discussions on resilient supply chains, USMCA and supplier diversification.

- Best for: A global manufacturing company seeking a keynote on resilient supply chains, USMCA and supplier diversification.
- Not for: Consumer electronics brands seeking a short product endorsement or comparative security claim for a device.
- Check first: Confirm comparable keynote samples, audience results, event format and terms.

### Takeaways

- Diversify the supply base instead of forecasting tariffs.
- Trade agreements written for the last economy need rewriting.
- The AI conversation is missing the people who have to adopt it.

## Main ideas

- **Diversify the supply base instead of forecasting tariffs**: Vyas recommends that companies stop trying to predict individual tariffs and instead build long-term diversification and optionality through multiple suppliers, production locations, and logistics routes, so no single country becomes a point of failure. Tariffs and policy shifts are unpredictable, but exposure is manageable; concentration risk is the real vulnerability. They also reiterate a long-held position: every supply chain is more global than ever, and irreversibly so.
- **Trade agreements written for the last economy need rewriting**: Vyas treats the July 2026 USMCA review as a negotiation with global stakes, not a regional story. The agreement was negotiated for an internal-combustion-engine world and a pre-AI digital economy; its rules of origin and digital trade provisions have been outpaced by EVs, autonomous systems, and AI-driven supply chains. In this argument, a USMCA 2.0 would need technology-adaptive language governing what North American industry actually makes today. Vyas focuses the talks on three areas: market access, curbing China-linked investment into Mexico that reaches US supply chains, and technology-adaptive rules.
- **The AI conversation is missing the people who have to adopt it**: Vyas argues that most AI commentary comes from the technology industry and policymakers, while practitioners and educators on the adoption side have an equal or greater stake and are largely absent. They warn that the gap is widening between AI's expanding capabilities and the preparedness of professionals and organizations that can no longer afford to ignore the technology. The response, Vyas argues, must go beyond pointing out the gap.
- **Cybersecurity is a supply chain function, not an IT afterthought**: Vyas argues that cybersecurity is no longer a back-office IT issue but a core pillar of supply chain resilience. ICT is the world's most critical supply chain after healthcare because it underpins healthcare systems themselves. Security, they say, must be embedded at every tier: individual, institutional, and national.
- **Talent and education are the constraint on everything else**: A priority throughout Vyas's work is developing the people who will run supply chains through direct exposure to operations, not classroom theory alone. In the AI material, workforce readiness is central to the argument. The method is consistent: take students to a working site, then put them in front of operators who run that market.
- **Making supply chains legible to people outside the industry**: Vyas reaches beyond professional audiences, arguing that consumers feel supply chain decisions directly and that everyday products offer a way into the subject. Their commentary on war-related costs makes the same case in reverse: geopolitical events reach the fuel pump and grocery store, while businesses too small to absorb the shock carry the heaviest burden.

## Work to read

- [USMCA renewal: what the talks decide and why it reaches past North America](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/thevyasusc_tricky-negotiations-begin-monday-to-renew-activity-7439694602791628800-TDdp)
- [Supply Chain Demystified: the AI adoption gap with Abe Eshkenazi of ASCM](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/thevyasusc_episode-26-the-future-of-supply-chains-activity-7506829451008249856-ZLS7)
- [The EU's ICT Supply Chain Security Toolbox, read from the conference floor](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/thevyasusc_toolbox-to-improve-ict-supply-chain-security-activity-7430277549823504385-Enwp)
- [A docuseries on coffee, from bean to brew](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/thevyasusc_supply-chain-demystified-from-bean-to-brew-activity-7500578654146654208-lcsi)
- [Summit panel recap: China+1, India's opening, and Mexico's proximity argument](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/thevyasusc_supplychain-geopolitics-globaltrade-activity-7493808754342309888-OOjl)
- [War-driven fuel and grocery costs, in the LA Times](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/thevyasusc_us-hits-diesel-fuel-milestone-as-prices-activity-7502550927023747072-RyYK)
- [Teaching on site: cohort 14 at Vietnam's largest container port](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/thevyasusc_what-an-incredible-day-bridging-infrastructure-activity-7512894894999334913-3uFY)

## Brand relationships

- **University of Southern California (USC) Master of Science in Global Supply Chain Management** (employment)
- **ASCM (Association for Supply Chain Management)** (disclosed_partnership)
- **Planet Security Inc.** (mention)
- **Los Angeles Times** (mention)

## Partnerships

The material reviewed does not describe a sponsorship offer, advertising package, rate, or partnership inquiry process for Nick Vyas personally. Vyas hosts the Supply Chain Demystified podcast, moderates and speaks on conference panels, and helps run events including the USC Global Supply Chain Excellence Summit and CHAINge, ASCM's annual conference, which they chair in 2026. The summit post credits a board, event partners, sponsors, and volunteers, and notes a strategic partnership between ASCM and Kendrick GSCI on AI research; a separate post about an upcoming coffee docuseries names Klatch Coffee. These are organisational relationships and programming credits, not published terms a brand can buy against. For a keynote or sponsored episode, ask about availability, format, deliverables, rates, and disclosure before committing.

## Alternatives

- Oscar Vega: Choose Vega over Vyas when the room is full of sourcing and procurement practitioners who need the operating detail behind diversification rather than the policy frame around it. Vega's posts work through what China+1 actually changes: moving final assembly to Mexico, India, Vietnam, or Eastern Europe does not move the components, tooling, machinery, or raw materials, so the concentration risk can survive the relocation. They push the audience past Tier 1 supplier mapping toward where critical parts are made, who controls the raw material, and which sources are single points of failure. The Mexico post makes the same argument from the cost side: peso movements expose sourcing decisions built only on labor arbitrage, while decisions built on lead time, inventory, engineering collaboration, USMCA access, and responsiveness hold up. For a manufacturer whose audience has to rewrite supplier maps after the keynote, that is closer to the work than a trade-policy overview.
- George Arezina: Consider Arezina when the manufacturer's resilience problem lies in enterprise IT rather than physical goods. Arezina's posts connect tariffs to hardware refreshes, networking gear, components, licensing model changes, and enterprise agreement renewals, and ask whether procurement, software asset management, and vendor management teams are already building tariff contingencies into contract negotiations. The Canada tariff post adds the alliance angle: retaliation lists land on industrial equipment and electronics, and the cost is passed to businesses planning twelve months out. For a manufacturer whose exposure runs through IT vendors and multi-year contracts, that is a more specific and useful session than a general trade talk.
- Joe Amalfitano, CPSP: Bring in Amalfitano when the audience's next decision is a compliance one with a deadline attached. The posts show what a team should do in a defined window: run top-selling SKUs against the Canadian tariff list by tariff classification rather than product category, re-run landed cost on affected items under DDP, decide whether to absorb, split, or pass through the surtax, check what checkout is quoting, and move inventory already sitting in Canada before the deadline. The EU post extends the same discipline to classification itself, asking where an HS code actually lives, whether two people would assign the same code to the same product, and who would answer a customs query. For a manufacturer or brand facing a specific tariff or customs change, that operational specificity is the value.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/