Freight Forwarders And Brokers Seek To Mitigate Tariffs On Multiple Fronts

Guest commentary by Glenn Palanacki (Descartes) on key findings from the 2025 Global Forwarder/Broker Benchmark Study from Descartes.

Nov 13, 2025

Tariff uncertainty continues to be a major concern in the logistics industry, according to the 2025 Global Forwarder/Broker Benchmark Study from Descartes. Survey results show forwarders and brokers consider tariffs as one of the most impactful regulatory or industry changes (42%), second only to pricing pressure.

Breaking these numbers down by region, North American forwarders and brokers (53%) appear to be much more focused on tariffs than Latin America (30%), EMEA (28%) and APAC (27%).

In addition, rising consumer costs due to tariff policies is the second ranked ecommerce impact on forwarding and brokerage (43%). Related options — the need for flexible warehousing (30%) and cross-border customs expertise (25%) — are also significant ecommerce impacts, presumably a reflection of changes in U.S. trade policy on ecommerce shipments such as the recent suspension of the duty-free de minimis exemption.

While forwarders and brokers see global instability as the main macroeconomic challenge to impact the logistics industry over the next five years…

Trust and Trading Partner Compliance

As a follow-up to previous surveys on trust in supply chain management, this survey explores trust as it relates to trading partners complying with regulations (e.g., forced labor, environmental, global trade, etc.). If a trusted supply chain partner was found to have compliance or risk management issues, how would your organization most likely respond? What type of evidence do you require from trading partners for them to receive/retain “Trusted Partner” status?

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