Trade compliance as a strategic lever for growth in a fragmented global economy: Friendshoring and trade agreements

• Trade agreements can be a strategic lever to reduce trade costs, strengthen resilience, and expand businesses’ room to act when conditions change
• Businesses may be leaving value untapped by overlooking preferential trade benefits in sourcing, manufacturing, and market-entry decisions
• Better data, value-chain visibility and cross-functional governance can help businesses capture PTA benefits and identify new growth opportunities

For many years, most companies planned their business around open markets, predictable trade relationships, and global supply chains tuned for time and cost, efficiency and scale. Now, geopolitical tension, fast policy changes, and new regulations are reshaping trade and putting more focus on resilience, security, and diversification. Business leaders who understand their trade position and compliance maturity are better positioned to navigate this shifting landscape and plan for disruption in their operating model rather than be surprised by it.  

In response to these shifting trade dynamics, companies are increasingly looking for practical tools such as Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) to enhance flexibility, resilience, and growth. If used well, PTAs can do more than just recovering tariff costs; they can serve as a strategic lever and expand companies’ room to act on short- or long-term events (e.g., sudden trade blockage or trends like climate change and technological disruption) that impact supply chains. They also create more predictable rules that support long-term planning and capital investment. Yet a big share of eligible trade still pays standard tariffs, leaving measurable savings and strategic options on the table. Leading organisations are including PTAs and trade compliance maturity in board-level discussions on business decisions to create resilience and growth.

In collaboration with the World Economic Forum, our series of four executive briefings explores the role of trade compliance as a strategic growth lever. The first briefing focuses on friendshoring and trade agreements and provides a practical guide for using PTAs in core business planning, reshaping sourcing, and manufacturing decisions, and building more resilient supply chains. 

Three questions for the executives to consider:

1. How could trade claims and preferential access improve the economics of your growth strategy?
2. Where should supply chain transformation use trade claims and agreement coverage to redesign sourcing, manufacturing, and distribution for greater resilience and enterprise value?
3. How could corporate and operating-model choices—such as entity location, production footprint, and intercompany flows—capture more trade value while preserving strategic flexibility?