The supply-chain savant: How FedEx CEO Raj Subramaniam leads through ‘reglobalization’

When the global economy is about to go haywire, few people are better positioned to read the signals than Raj Subramaniam.

The FedEx CEO presides over an operation that moves roughly 18 million packages globally and generates two petabytes of data every day.

The company connects 3 million shippers to 225 million consumers across 220 countries and territories.

“We are the referendum on global supply chains,” Subramaniam told me in June, when I interviewed him at FedEx’s headquarters in Memphis for Fortune ’s Titans podcast .

“I’ve been doing this for 35 years, and I’ve never seen a change in one year like we’ve seen in 2025.” FedEx’s data shows, in real time, the geopolitical reordering sparked by President Donald Trump’s tariffs and, this year, the war in Iran : U.S. imports went down, while U.S. exports went up.

In Latin America, Southeast Asia, and India, FedEx experienced rapid growth.

Subramaniam has coined a term for what he’s seeing: “reglobalization.” “The supply-chain patterns are changing, and we are moving from one equilibrium state to another,” he said.

“We are in the middle of such a transition.” Meanwhile, within the $95 billion company he runs (No.

50 on the Fortune 500 ), Subramaniam has been navigating another sea change.

In June 2025, FedEx’s founder, Fred Smith, died at the age of 80 —leaving Subramaniam, the second CEO in FedEx’s 53-year history, without his mentor.

Taking the reins from a legendary founder—as Subramaniam did in 2022—is a great privilege, he told me.

“I always say that I can see far because I’m standing on the shoulders of a giant,” he said.

That giant had groomed Subramaniam for the top job for years, as he rose through the ranks and served stints as FedEx’s president and chief operating officer.

But as any CEO will tell you, even the most carefully planned leadership transition isn’t easy.