Signal Supply Chain Concerns Doubled Amid Regulatory Complexity, Thomson Reuters and Xeneta Find

Summary

Thomson Reuters' 2026 Global Trade Report, released in February 2026 from a survey of 225 senior trade professionals, found supply chain concerns doubling year over year as companies adapt to tariff volatility and regulatory complexity. In response, trade and supply chain data analytics has become the most widely used technology (58% of respondents), followed by automation for enterprise resource planning (56%), supply chain management (55%), and supply chain visibility (54%). Companies report cascading effects beyond cost, including regulatory compliance burdens, quality concerns, increased documentation requirements, deeper scrutiny of tariff classification and country-of-origin claims, and more frequent inspections. This builds on a multi-year trend: the 2024 Global Trade Report found 74% of respondents said their businesses were impacted by supply chain due diligence requirements and 52% by geopolitically charged export control laws. Separately, Xeneta's analysis of 2026 supply chain risks notes that compliance requirements keep growing in volume and complexity, spanning environmental disclosures, sustainability reporting, e-invoicing, and customs mandates, and that even short regional supply lines are exposed to local congestion, labor issues, and regulatory change, sometimes more volatile than large global routes.