As you may have noticed, President Donald Trump announced massive new tariffs on April 2, with a 10% baseline rate to be slapped on imports from most countries, plus even higher rates for imports from the EU, China, and other nations. Regardless of how much Trump may be willing to negotiate, the coming tariffs will likely leave few CFOs unaffected. To learn more about what finance teams can do in response, we spoke with Charlie Clevenger, a principal specializing in procurement and supply chain management at UHY Consulting, which has many small- and mid-cap manufacturers as clients.

Clevenger has experience with tariffs from the other side of the desk as well: Before joining UHY, he worked for manufacturing companies supplying the automotive and defense industries. He told us about how he advises clients seeking advice about tariffs, and what strategies they’re using to mitigate them.

A three-step plan to dealing with tariffs. Clevenger and his colleagues advise clients to take a three-step approach to handling tariffs. First, CFOs and finance teams should be sure they’re compliant, something especially important given today’s “changing and more complex landscape,” he said. He advises they monitor the tariff landscape while staying in close communication with their customs brokers, and that their purchasing and supply chain teams frequently talk with suppliers and logistics providers.

For more on dealing with tariffs, click here.—CV

The IRS’s probationary employees have got to be feeling whiplash at this point.

In February, they were all laid off, as part of efforts by the Department of Government Efficiency to reduce the federal workforce. In March, they were back on the agency payroll but on administrative leave.

Now, they’ll be brought back to work.

The IRS last week informed the roughly 7,000 probationary employees that they’ll “soon receive instructions for how to return to full-time duty by April 14,” according to an email that CFO Brew reviewed. The email also pointed out the agency brought back the workers “in compliance with recent court orders.” A US district court judge last month determined the Office of Personnel Management illegally fired federal probationary employees.

It shouldn’t be surprising if some workers want to get off Mr. Bones’ Wild Ride rather than return to a tenuous employment situation. The IRS more or less acknowledged this in its email, which provided instructions for workers who don’t want to come back, and also made note that “outside employment does not necessarily prevent you from returning to work.”

Seriously, is this for real?—AZ

You have the right to remain silent...except when you’re a major tech vendor, like Oracle, at the center of serious breach allegations, according to some cybersecurity professionals.

In late March, Oracle made headlines after a threat actor by the alias of rose87168 claimed on BreachForums that it had six million records obtained from Oracle Cloud’s single sign-on (SSO) and lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) systems for sale.

However, despite mounting evidence supporting the breach allegations and a class-action lawsuit filed against the tech giant in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas in relation to the matter last week, Oracle largely declined to elaborate on or even confirm the incident at first. The tech giant previously told several publications, including The Register and Dark Reading, that the published credentials are not for Oracle Cloud and no breach has occurred.

Bloomberg reported on April 2 that the vendor informed some customers that an attacker had gained access to a “legacy environment” that hadn’t been used in eight years, and that the FBI and CrowdStrike were investigating the incident. Oracle did not immediately respond to IT Brew’s requests for comment on the alleged breach.

Keep reading IT Brew’s story on the Oracle breach here.—BM