Salesforce’s AI agents can decode tariffs in minutes

Tariffs have caused lots of headaches for business owners around the world, especially as they’ve become a hot topic in the political landscape. Just this week, President Donald Trump enacted 25% import taxes on Mexican and Canadian goods, causing the S&P 500 to plummet.

Businesses struggling with these complex tariffs may have a newfound appreciation for a tool that promises to simplify the process: Agentforce, Salesforce’s AI-powered agent platform that was launched in October 2024. Agentforce enables users to create AI agents that can analyze and make decisions based on the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, a 4,400-plus page document that sets tariff rates for over 20,000 imported items. 

Agentforce users can create an “Import Specialist Agent” that will analyze the lengthy schedule and will automatically adjust pricing or create business plans accordingly. 

What once took businesses months to adapt to can now be handled in minutes, according to Paul Tatum, Salesforce’s EVP of Solution Engineering.

Tatum tells Fast Company that the Import Specialist Agent is one of the many ways that AI can make convoluted, labor-intensive tasks easier.

“Governments around the world are overworked and outstretched,” says Tatum. “Technology has helped with that over the years, but digital labor is going to transform the level of service and capabilities of the government.”

The Import Specialist Agent responds to each business’s unique data, taking into account the size of a business, what products it sells, and previous sales history. This technology is applicable across the board for small businesses, large businesses, and government employees, says Tatum.

Since 2018, the schedule has been updated around 11–30 times each year. Changing policies and pricing to align with each individual schedule change can be a laborious process without the help of AI, Tatum says. And although other AI software exists that can analyze the tariff schedule, Salesforce’s may be the only one that can automatically take action that fits a business’s specific needs, says Tatum.

“A lot of the AI technology focus has been around developing large language models, and you see those come out every day. They’re an important part of the puzzle,” Tatum says. “But we believe that the most impactful part of the puzzle is making agents practical, like a digital employee working alongside and augmenting your human employee.”

Agentforce currently has about 3,000 paying customers who have created over 5,000 unique AI agents for different purposes—with the Import Specialist Agent being just one of the many.  Customers pay $2 per conversation, but this pricing sometimes will vary based on the scale and complexity of the work being performed, according to Salesforce.

The tariff schedule isn’t the only lengthy government document that Tatum wants to see Agentforce tackle. He says these capabilities can be transferred to parse through dense language surrounding social security or Medicare.

Government documentation is thorough, but often impenetrable, Tatum says. “I open up the IRS website and say: ‘What in the world is going on?’” he adds. “This is where digital employees can help us.

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