The 2024 Thomson Reuters Global Trade report highlights key challenges businesses face, including supply chain issues and talent shortages, and notes that while technology offers solutions, it also adds complexity, requiring investment in talent and data.
“Complexity” and “disruption” — those are the keywords when describing global trade and supply chain management in 2025, according to Thomson Reuters 2024 Global Trade Survey Report. The report is based on responses from upper-level trade professionals in North America, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Latin America, and Asia Pacific.
Each of the 2024 survey’s top themes is related to complexity and disruption in some way, with disruption in the supply chain being the primary concern for respondents. Regulations and international politics, both sources of complexity in the new year, are also top concerns.
At a recent Supply ChainBrain webcast, Andrew Moxon, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Thomson Reuters, and Marianne Rowden, CEO and Director at E-Merchants Trade Council (EMTC), discussed how these themes are playing out in real-world business and what companies can do to combat them.
1. International politics
When the survey was taken in September 2024, about 19% of respondents said international politics/conflicts were their top strategic goal. In the months since, that percentage has likely increased.
“Politically related disruptions are an ongoing reality in global trade, and events this year have certainly borne that out most prominently in many of the new U.S. president’s actions and proposals. And we can expect more disruption,” Moxon said.
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One example of this disruption is the tariffs President Donald Trump has threatened other countries with. Affected companies will retaliate with their own tariffs, which will also impact trade and supply chains.
Another example: Two proposed regulations on the entry of low-value shipments that take advantage of the administrative exemption of de minimis under 19 USC 1321. Those low-value shipments account for over 90% of the shipments that are imported into the United States and involve a lot of direct-to-consumer shipments. “These proposed rules, which include making certain products ineligible for the exemption, would drastically limit or eliminate certain shipments from using that administrative exemption, “ Rowden said.
Navigating this complexity is difficult because of the uncertainty around U.S. national and international politics. “Trade professionals are just thirsty for regulatory clarity,” Moxon said. “These regulations are very sweeping in some cases. How are those expectations going to be measured? How are they going to be tracked? There’s really thirst for that clarity.”
Quenching that thirst will require more transparency from the agencies enforcing the regulations.
2. Skill and talent shortages
For years, companies have been dealing with shortages and skill gaps in managing global trade compliance. As the regulatory landscape continues to get more complex, the skills needed for ensuring compliance are more essential than ever — and are also evolving.
Addressing this requires increased education and awareness along with investment in automation and emerging technological solutions. Many companies are turning to service providers and consultants to bridge the gaps.
“We need to recognize that trade compliance is actually a profession,” Rowden said. “It’s a multidisciplinary profession, and we have a lot of liability. In a way, people only recognize both trade compliance and supply chain when things go wrong, and things have been going wrong in the last couple of years. We have to realize that in trade compliance, a lot more functions and a lot more responsibility and liability are being imposed on the supply chain.”
Companies and trade organizations also need to work with academic institutions to ensure those entering the field have the correct skills for today’s evolving trade compliance requirements, she noted.
3. Environmental, social, and governance issues
ESG is about making sure that the supply chain is ethical and resilient to ensure that companies are avoiding the reputational, financial, and operational risk that attends noncompliance. To do that requires diversifying supply chains.
“Companies really need to assess their sourcing vis-a-vis their consumer markets because I think the knee-jerk reaction for many companies is to say, ‘Okay, we’ll just move out of China into Southeast Asia,’ but that is filling up with capacity,” Rowden said.
In an environment where challenges are diverse and unpredictable, and regulations are changing by the day, how can corporations make it predictable?
Said Moxon: “If you have more locations, you also have more vendors in more locations, and the upside with more vendors is you can reduce logistics costs. You can shorten the proximities; you can streamline your schedules. The downside is that you have more vendors, which means more vendors in your supply chain. You’ve got more complexity and more expectations to know your supplier.”
Corporations with more vendors will also have more data — and, therefore, need an efficient way to manage that data. “With that is going to come the need for more management, more automation,” Moxon said.
4. How technological advances can solve some of these issues
The fourth complexity comes from the very thing that could solve some of these other complexities: Technology.
The sheer number of regulations and mountains of data means the days of relying on manual tools are long gone. As a result, “we’re seeing a rise in interest in emerging technologies and an increased focus on automation to meet those challenges,” Moxon said. Technologies, such as machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), and blockchain, can help create visibility and efficiencies that bridge a staffing shortage and that effectively manage the supply chain. For example, blockchain‘s capability to track product descriptions, value-free trade agreements, qualifications, and certificates is much better than a database’s.
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But technologies that solve complex problems are themselves complex. Many companies are using service providers and specialized consultants to buy, set up, keep, and sometimes even run the solutions. This is likely to continue as companies deal with labor shortages.
To hear more from Moxon and Rowden, listen to the SupplyChainBrain webcast; Learn more about global trends by downloading the Thomson Reuters 2024 Global Trade Report.
Thomson Reuters 2024 Global trade survey report
Supply chain vulnerabilities and complexity
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