Procurement in 2026: how tariffs and AI will reshape supply chains and supplier relationships

Experts forecast that by 2026, rising tariffs and geopolitical shocks will push procurement teams to innovate through route diversification and advanced AI, transforming supplier collaboration and supply chain resilience.

Alex Saric and Pascal Bensoussan of procurement software vendor Ivalua foresee 2026 as a year in which tariffs and geopolitics force procurement teams to rethink how they secure materials, manage suppliers and deploy artificial intelligence across supp...

“As tariff-tennis rages between nations and geopolitical shocks continue, 2026 will see business leaders adapt by ‘gaming’ supply chain management to keep costs and risk down. This means diversifying supply routes, building new supply paths, and shifting final assembly locations to navigate trade complexities without the need for costly nearshoring. Successful organizations will be able to identify and carve out cost-effective trade routes that mitigate the impact of tariffs and other disruptions, increasing competitiveness and reducing risk,” Alex Saric, Smart Procurement Expert at Ivalua, wrote in a forecast published on IT Supply Chain.

Saric’s warning mirrors recent empirical evidence that tariffs are already reshaping trade flows and raising operating costs. According to Reuters reporting, imports to the Port of Los Angeles fell 11.5% in November 2025 as firms adjusted inventory and sourcing to avoid higher duties, while national port import volumes declined 7.8% in the same month. Reuters also noted mounting uncertainty over U.S. tariff policy as the Supreme Court prepares to consider challenges to their legal basis. Industry surveys reinforce the point: McKinsey’s supply‑chain risk survey found that 82% of respondents said new tariffs had affected their operations, with many seeing material cost rises and demand softening.

The cost pressure is already being felt in energy and heavy industry. A Deloitte report in October 2025 concluded that U.S. tariffs could raise material and service costs for oil and gas projects by between 4% and 40%, potentially delaying more than $50 billion of projects into 2026. China’s Iron and Steel Association told Reuters that U.S. increases of up to 25% on steel and aluminium could disrupt global supply chains and risk escalation into broader trade conflict.

Those dynamics help explain why some major manufacturers are reshoring or near‑sourcing at scale. Reuters reported that IKEA is ramping up U.S. production to blunt tariff exposure and shorten lead times, reversing earlier offshoring trends and investing in domestic factories and suppliers.

For Ivalua, the operational response will be technological as well as strategic. “To make effective decisions and identify where savings can be made, organizations need granular, real-time knowledge of their full supplier networks. AI will be critical to help teams sift through international complexities, bring dispersed data together, highlight potential risks, identify alternative suppliers, and give procurement teams the foresight to act before major price hikes. If a critical shipping route closes, AI can model different logistics scenarios to keep production on track and costs under control,” Saric wrote.

That view aligns with broader market forecasts for more autonomous supply‑chain software. Gartner predicts that by 2030 half of cross‑functional supply‑chain management solutions will include agentic AI capable of autonomously executing decisions. Gartner analysts told delegates at their Supply Chain Symposium/Xpo that agentic systems could provide a virtual workforce able to carry out complex tasks across ecosystems.

Ivalua’s Pascal Bensoussan argued the near‑term return on investment from AI will come less from isolated time savings than from freeing procurement professionals to build strategic relationships. “The new procurement ROI in 2026 will be driven by intelligent collaboration between humans and AI. The compounding commercial gains will come from teams finally having the bandwidth to build long-term relationships. Early agent deployments show modest time savings, but the real value , often 7x or more , comes from what teams can finally do once supported by AI that handles the transactional work. As agents take over intake, AP validation, supplier onboarding and other repetitive flows, procurement gains the capacity to engage suppliers more strategically and consistently. This human-machine hybrid operating model will drive deeper collaboration, resulting in better proposals, lower total cost, stronger SLAs, and clearer visibility into risk and sustainability.”

Bensoussan also forecast that “no-code AI will let procurement teams build digital workflows and automate routine tasks without writing a line of code,” enabling practitioners to stitch together processes and collaborations without heavy IT dependency. That trend, he said, will turn procurement into “a digital collaboration engine – faster, smarter and far more adaptive.”

Combined, the predictions from Ivalua and market research paint a picture of two complementary responses to tariff‑driven disruption: tactical reshoring and route diversification to reduce exposure, and deeper digitalisation to gain end‑to‑end visibility and agility. McKinsey’s survey suggests many companies have already favoured quick, tactical moves over longer transformation programmes as they cope with immediate tariff risk; the challenge for 2026 will be to translate those emergency measures into sustained resilience without losing sight of efficiency and cost control.

Supplier relationships will be central to that effort. “Supplier relationships will be businesses’ most valuable currency in 2026. As access to critical materials tightens and demand for manufactured goods accelerates, organizations with shallow or transactional supplier networks will find themselves at the back of the queue,” Saric wrote, noting that suppliers will favour customers who reduce friction around onboarding, compliance and forecasting. He added that AI agents could guide suppliers through processes and surface the effects of new tariffs so buyers and sellers can collaborate on mitigation.

Reuters reporting and industry studies underline the stakes: tariffs have already prompted inventory timing shifts, production relocations and contract renegotiations, and energy and manufacturing projects face tangible cost and schedule risk. The policy environment remains uncertain; as Reuters observed, national fiscal positions and geopolitical tensions will influence trade patterns into 2026 and beyond.

Taken together, these forecasts suggest a near future in which procurement leaders must combine geopolitical strategy with digital execution: diversify routes and production where economically viable, fortify supplier partnerships, and deploy agentic and no‑code AI to turn a fragmented, tariff‑stressed supply chain into an adaptive, data‑driven network. The companies that succeed, the Ivalua executives argue, will be those that can both “identify and carve out cost-effective trade routes” and cultivate the supplier access and collaborative processes that money alone cannot buy.

Source: Noah Wire Services