The Supreme Court’s ruling invalidating President Trump’s IEEPA-based tariffs is among the most consequential trade news in decades. For CEOs and CFOs who’ve spent the past year absorbing margin hits, repricing products and rerouting supply chains, a new wave of uncertainty is just beginning (again).

Chief Executive talked Friday with Sudeep Suman, Venky Ramesh and Richeek Maitra, trade and tariff experts at global advisory firm AlixPartners, to get some quick thoughts on how to navigate. They shared five essential questions you can ask in the next few days, (and who you may want to ask):

1. What’s our exposure in each of the four tariff categories?

Who to ask: your trade counsel and customs broker, asap.

Not all tariffs were created equal, and not all of them changed Friday morning. There are four distinct buckets, and you need to know exactly where you sit in each one.

Section 301 tariffs (the China-specific duties first imposed in 2018) are untouched. So are Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum. Both had congressional approval and were never part of this ruling. What the court struck down were the two categories imposed by executive order: the Liberation Day reciprocal tariffs, introduced last spring on most U.S. trading partners at rates ranging from 10 percent to 25 percent or more; and the IEEPA-based fentanyl tariffs of 10 percent on Canada, Mexico and China.

The Liberation Day reciprocal tariffs are the most critical for most mid-market companies—and the most complicated, because they vary by country, many of which had active trade negotiations underway. Some deals were already negotiated, others are pending and the ruling throws all of it into question.

“They really need to go down though the reciprocal tariffs country by country, and understand what’s their exposure by each country, by each commodity,” says Ramesh. That’s the first task Monday morning, before anything else.

2. On the buy side: Do I still have to pay, and can I get any of it back?

Who to ask: your customs broker and trade counsel, working together.

If you’re an importer of record with exposure to the reciprocal or fentanyl tariffs, the immediate operational question is whether you can stop paying or at least pause. The court has struck these tariffs down, but customs machinery doesn’t unwind overnight.

Get your customs broker and trade lawyer together and ask specifically, “Do I need to pay these now? Can I stop? Can I delay payment—even 30 days—while we get more clarity?” Some companies with tens of millions of dollars in tariff payments over the past year are already asking whether any of that comes back. The ruling was silent on retroactive refunds, and that question will play out in lower courts for a long time. Don’t build a refund into your financial projections. Do make sure your records are clean and organized by entry and HTS code, in case a refund mechanism eventually materializes.

3. On the sell side: What’s in our contracts with customers?

Who to ask: your general counsel and your head of sales, together, before customers call you.

Some companies built tariff contingency language into customer agreements, provisions tied to what happens if tariffs are withdrawn or change dramatically. If you did, your customers may start asking questions about those terms very soon. Be ready for those conversations before they arrive.

The math matters here too. A 10 percent or 20 percent tariff sounds manageable in the abstract, but by the time it moves through landed costs, domestic distribution and local supply chain, it can easily become two or three times that at the consumer level. Unwinding that through the pricing ecosystem is not simple, and your customers know it. Think through the scenarios: what you’re obligated to do, what you’re not and what the conversation looks like in each case.

“Be prepared,” says Maitra. “Think about all the scenarios that could unfold and be prepared to have those conversations with customers.”

4. What are my competitors doing, and who has the best read on that?

Who to ask: your trade and compliance team first, then outside trade counsel and advisors and your trade association.

Nobody wants to be the only company still collecting tariff-era margins if the rest of the market moves. And nobody wants to give those margins back if competitors are holding the line. You also need to know what others are doing with potential clawbacks from the government as well as whether they are pausing on payments. Figuring out where the market is heading—fast—is a genuine competitive intelligence priority this week.

The best antennae are closer than you think, the AlixPartners experts say. Your trade and compliance function, wherever it sits, whether in procurement, legal or finance, typically has the closest read on market dynamics and the existing relationships with outside trade lawyers and consultants who are talking to companies across industries. Your procurement and sales teams also have ears to the ground through supplier and customer conversations happening in real time. And your trade association, if you’re in one, will be aggregating intelligence from peers quickly.

“Stay connected to your trade lawyers, whoever’s within the organization, if you have external counsel, and definitely your customs broker because they see what’s happening on the ground,” says Suman. “And of course strategic advisors like us.”

5. How should this change our supply chain strategy?

Who to ask: your chief supply chain officer, with your strategy team and outside advisors in the loop.

This is the longer-horizon question, but it belongs on the table now. The ruling introduces new uncertainty into trade deals that were negotiated under the old tariff framework, including deals with countries like India and Korea. Even those negotiated agreements may not survive in their current form, since they lacked congressional approval and were built on the same executive order authority the court just struck down.

On China specifically: If the U.S. now has less negotiating leverage, the whole dynamic shifts. What does that mean for your China sourcing, your CapEx plans, your supply chain diversification strategy?

Suman counsels caution about making any strategic moves. Global trade will remain uncertain, and diversification of your supply chain remains critical. “Companies need to be thoughtful around how should they make a longer-term decision versus what they’re trying to do right now,” he says. “This doesn’t take away anything from the discussion and thinking and strategy around the global supply chain shift that’s happening.”