> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.thetwoshoresbrief.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # International Trade Can No Longer Be Planned Once a Year - URL: https://www.thetwoshoresbrief.com/en/international-trade-can-no-longer-be-planned-once-a-year-and-then-you-wait-for-the-outcome/ - Published: 2026-09-07T17:17:01.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-07T17:45:17.000Z - Description: Two tariff regimes moving in opposite directions in the same season. Why international trade management can no longer be reviewed just once a year. - Author: Alvaro - Tags: en, International Markets ### IN 30 SECONDS - On February 20, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the legal basis for much of the 2025 tariffs (IEEPA); days later the White House invoked Section 122, imposing a global tariff of 10-15% that expires after 150 days unless Congress extends it. - On May 22, Mexico and the European Union modernized their Global Agreement: 99% of the goods they trade will move to zero tariffs, some immediately. - According to KPMG, 26% of companies are already in a formal reshoring phase (up from 10% six months earlier), and 33% have hired staff specialized in tariff issues (up from 22%). - The right response isn't to pick a side between the U.S. and the EU: it's to stop reviewing trade risk once a year and move to a model that reviews it every six months. On February 20, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the law underpinning much of the tariffs imposed since 2025 (IEEPA, an economic emergency statute) did not give the president the power to impose across-the-board tariffs — that authority belongs to Congress. Within days, the White House invoked a different authority, Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, to impose a global tariff of 10%, later raised to 15% — an authority that, unlike the previous one, expires after 150 days unless Congress extends it. Three months later, on the other side of the border, the movement went the opposite way. On May 22, Mexico and the European Union signed the modernization of their Global Agreement, in force since 2000, eliminating tariffs on 99% of the goods the two blocs trade — with immediate entry into force for much of the tariff lines and a phase-in schedule of up to ten years for the rest. Both governments presented it, without hedging, as a shield against U.S. trade policy. For a company that exports, imports or distributes across several countries, neither headline is a distant legal matter. They are two tariff regimes moving in opposite directions, in the same season of the same year, and neither is the final word: the United States has already opened investigations under two other statutes (Section 232 and Section 301) to sustain tariffs through other channels, after a U.S. trade court struck down Section 122 in May — with the appeal still pending — and the modernization with the EU still has phase-in stages pending well into the next decade. This back-and-forth is not an isolated U.S. case. It is a symptom of something broader: trade policy has become a variable that changes faster — and in more directions at once — than most companies' planning cycles. ## The Numbers Behind the Anxiety A KPMG survey of manufacturing executives, published in 2026, found that 26% of companies are already in a formal planning or active-execution phase of relocating operations (reshoring), up from just 10% six months earlier. 34% of businesses are passing on more than half of the tariff cost to consumers, more than double the 13% recorded in May 2025\. And 33% have hired staff specialized in handling tariff complexity, up from 22% in September 2025. > One in three businesses is already passing more than half of the tariff cost on to consumers. Thomson Reuters' 2026 Global Trade Report confirms the pattern from another angle: 72% of international trade professionals cite tariff volatility as the most disruptive regulatory change they face, nearly double the 41% reported a year earlier. 68% rank supply-chain management as their top concern, also nearly double what it was a year ago. And one telling figure: 40% of those trade professionals say these changes now carry more weight in their company's executive decisions than they did twelve months ago. That last figure matters more than it might seem. For years, the international trade function at many companies was administrative: someone who filled out customs forms after the business had already decided where to buy and where to sell. That model no longer works. When the legal and trade framework can change several times in a year, these variables need to be on the table before the contract is signed, not after. ## Where This Lands: The Route Matters More Than the Factory The EU agreement illustrates why. Products that until now paid tariffs of up to 45% to enter Mexico move to zero tariffs, some immediately; others drop from rates that reached as high as 100%. For a European producer, that isn't an automatic advantage: it's a door that opens and has to be walked through quickly, before a competitor gets there first. And walking through it doesn't depend on building a plant — it depends on having already resolved who distributes the product in Mexico and how, whether that relationship is properly protected by contract, and whether the local structure can capture the new tariff advantage from the very first container. That is the pattern that repeats in every tariff realignment, whether upward (as in the United States) or downward (as with the European Union): the bottleneck is almost never the decision to manufacture or grow, or even to enter a country. It's whether the trade route — distributor, local legal, commercial and financial structure, regulatory compliance — is built to move at the speed the rules are changing. ## Why Local Talent Stopped Being a Luxury The most common response to trade uncertainty isn't to scale back international activity — it's to plan and reorganize it with people physically based where the business happens. The jump from 22% to 33% in specialized hiring for trade and tariff issues that KPMG reported is no coincidence: it's the difference between finding out about a regulatory change from a news alert and finding out because your own team, on the ground, is already working out a plan with the distributor before the change hits — so you capture the advantage from day one. > Hiring for specialized roles jumped from 22% to 33% in just six months. A local team doesn't replace headquarters' strategy — it completes it. Its role isn't executive; it's early warning: it verifies whether the distributor is honoring the contract, flags when a bill under discussion in the local congress could change the cost of doing business, and can escalate before the problem shows up on the P&L. ## Managing Ahead of the Curve as a Competitive Advantage, Not a Reaction What separates companies that navigate this environment well from those that fall behind isn't size or budget — it's whether their international management model is built to anticipate or only to react. A structured model includes, at minimum, three pieces: protection through real diversification of suppliers and markets (in the contract, not just on paper), local presence with the authority to escalate risk or opportunity signals, and a recurring scenario-planning exercise reviewed often — not once a year at the annual budget meeting. There is no shortage of proof of how much can change in the environment, the legislation, the tariffs or the exchange-rate policies within a single fiscal year. Financial and commercial planning, the right contract, an on-the-ground management team and the ability to get ahead of opportunities are the real success factors behind an international operation. The lesson from the first half of 2026 isn't that international trade became riskier. It always was. What changed is the speed — and the number of fronts at once — that companies now have to track, and the speed at which decisions have to be made. And that pace can only be sustained with a structured management model, a market-aligned strategy and plan, a master agreement that guarantees execution, experts on the ground, and a model that reviews the scenario every six months, not once a year. All of these pieces have to work together to guarantee a successful cross-border operation. **Related resource:** [Capstone Partners: M&A in the Beverage Sector (March 2026)](https://www.thetwoshoresbrief.com/capstone-beverage-ma-2026/), on how M&A capital is moving in a sector directly exposed to these same tariff swings.