What Tariffs Expose About Your Agreements — and How Contract Data Extraction Helps

Most business risks follow a pattern: you plan, you monitor, you adjust as needed.

Tariffs are trickier because they introduce volatility in a way that’s harder to contain. They can trigger a chain reaction inside existing agreements, so obligations become financially unsustainable, risk allocation shifts without either party changing the terms, and companies get trapped between legal commitments and economic reality.

Without a clear picture of what your contracts actually say, you're essentially making high-stakes decisions based on partial information. Getting ahead of these changes means understanding where tariffs intersect with your agreements, why your current tools probably can't keep up, and how CLM platforms like IntelAgree can help turn uncertainty into opportunity.

Where Tariffs Put the Most Pressure on Your Agreements

When tariffs rise sharply — or across more countries and commodities than expected — they start triggering domino effects in commercial contracts. Key clauses that come under pressure include:

• Force Majeure: Force majeure clauses have regained attention in the wake of recent tariff news, but their applicability is still a bit of a gray area. Unlike floods or earthquakes, which are clearly defined, isolated events, tariffs are often introduced in stages or announced in advance. That timeline creates ambiguity about whether they qualify as unforeseeable events that excuse performance. Even though many organizations strengthened these clauses during COVID, it was only temporarily. Without broader updates to templates or fallback language, they’re now facing the same limitations — this time with economic disruption that doesn’t fit cleanly into traditional definitions.
• Price Adjustment and Escalation: In supply-driven industries, these clauses are often the only mechanism that allows vendors to raise prices without breaching the agreement. When tariffs suddenly increase the cost of goods, sellers are either forced to absorb the loss or attempt to renegotiate without contractual backing. That leaves both parties exposed: vendors to margin erosion, buyers to unexpected price hikes or delivery delays. For companies without standardized adjustment language in place, these negotiations become slower, riskier, and more disruptive to downstream planning.
• Cost Fluctuation Protection: Where price adjustment protects sellers, cost fluctuation clauses give buyers some flexibility when input prices move beyond agreed thresholds. But these provisions are often missing unless the buyer is in a raw-material-heavy industry like construction or pharmaceuticals. As tariffs ripple through supplier networks, buyers may face dramatic cost increases without any structured path to contest them. Even well-negotiated volume discounts can quickly lose value when the underlying costs shift — leaving procurement teams with fewer options and no contractual footing to push back.
• Volume Commitments: Many long-term contracts include volume minimums to secure pricing or guarantee supply. But when tariffs make it more expensive—or less profitable—to fulfill those volumes, the terms can backfire. Sellers are locked into fulfilling orders at unfavorable margins, while buyers may want to reduce quantities but lack the contractual right to do so. This is especially problematic in wholesale or distribution agreements, where goods that were once easy to move become harder to sell. 
• Termination for Convenience: In flexible contracts, this clause offers a clean exit route when external conditions shift. But not all agreements include it, and even when they do, it may be tied to notice periods or penalties that make it impractical to use. Without this option, companies can’t pivot easily when tariffs make performance economically inefficient. For example, a buyer committed to purchasing thousands of units at pre-tariff pricing may no longer be able to walk away, even when the cost to fulfill the contract has doubled. In these cases, the absence of a termination-for-convenience clause turns a strategic decision into a legal constraint.
• Indemnification: Indemnity clauses are often narrowly defined — focused on IP infringement or third-party claims — but some include broader language around losses, expenses, or damages tied to contract performance. In the context of tariffs, that can open the door to disputes about who bears the financial impact. If one party claims losses due to a tariff-induced delay or pricing shift, the other could be unexpectedly responsible for covering those costs. 

Which Departments are Most Exposed to Tariff Risk

While legal may be the frontline for navigating tariff risks, they're not the only ones that feel the impact:

• Procurement: Procurement teams face vendors raising prices overnight. Their job quickly shifts from sourcing to triaging: What am I obligated to pay? Where can I renegotiate? Is there a clause that gives me leverage — or does it tie my hands?
• Finance: Tariffs skew forecasts. Finance needs to understand if and where the company’s cost base is changing, how that affects pricing, and whether termination or renegotiation clauses allow any cost containment. Static documents don’t answer those questions quickly enough.
• Legal: Legal isn’t just interpreting language — they’re now responsible for uncovering latent risk in hundreds or thousands of contracts. And they can’t do it one PDF at a time.
• Sales & Operations: If prices change or obligations shift, sales teams may need to reprice deals or manage customer expectations. Ops teams need to adjust delivery timelines. These teams rely on legal to surface risks early — something only possible with centralized, accessible contract data.

How Modern CLM Platforms Help You Respond to Regulatory Changes

CLM platforms like IntelAgree are designed for scale and complexity. They don't just store contracts — they help you make sense of them, fast. That’s critical in a tariff environment, where the stakes are high, the pace is fast, and the exposure isn’t always obvious.

To understand the value of CLM here, it helps to look at it through two lenses: how it supports decisions about contracts that already exist, and how it improves the ones you create in the future.

1. For Existing Contracts: Data Extraction Is Your Starting Line

When tariffs hit, the first question is: Which of our contracts are impacted?

CLM software with built-in AI extraction tools — like Saige Assist’s markup and bulk markup features — enables you to quickly scan, tag, and extract key attributes across your entire contract portfolio. Without model training, users can identify:

• Contracts missing a price escalation clause
• Agreements that lock in pricing without exceptions
• Terms with termination-for-convenience triggers
• Jurisdiction-sensitive clauses that might expose the business to local tariff policies

How this helps:

• Rapid triage of risk based on real data, not assumptions
• Clear visibility for finance and procurement into exposure
• Actionable segmentation: contracts to renegotiate, contracts to terminate, contracts to flag for renewal revision
  
  

Once identified, these agreements can be pulled into bulk amendment workflows, saving legal teams hundreds of hours on manual updates and ensuring consistency across counterparties.

The real value of CLM isn't just in backward-looking analysis. It's in using those insights to prevent future risks.

As your team creates new agreements, CLM features like AI-assisted redlining, clause comparison, and real-time contract advice support smarter, faster decisions — before signatures go down.

With tools like Saige Assist, users can:

• Insert preferred fallback language for price escalation or termination clauses based on business rules
• Compare counterparty edits to standard templates and flag deviations instantly
• Get plain-English guidance on whether a force majeure clause is enforceable or missing key scenarios
• See how individual clauses and full agreements align with configured risk scoring profiles — and make real-time adjustments to lower risk exposure before signing.
  
  

Why this matters:

• Legal can ensure compliance and resilience without slowing down deals
• Non-legal users (e.g., procurement or sales) can navigate complex terms with clarity
• Your contract language evolves with current risks — so you’re not caught off guard next time tariffs shift
  
  

And with configurable workflows, it’s easy to adjust approval paths based on the presence or absence of specific clauses — so teams can enforce consistency without reinventing the wheel.

The Bottom Line

Tariffs and regulatory volatility aren't rare events anymore. They’re part of the contracting environment companies have to operate in and plan for.

Companies that rely on static, file-cabinet approaches to contract management will continue to scramble when the rules shift. Meanwhile, those  that treat their contracts as dynamic business assets — searchable, adaptable, and actionable through platforms like IntelAgree — will move faster, negotiate smarter, and protect more value when it matters most. 

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