My Sunday thoughts on Customs #1

I will under this headline give some thoughts and reflections about customs in an unprecedented time of uncertainty for international trade. 2025 was a challenging year for global trade, and 2026 will not be different. This is the time to make customs your best friend. It is time to move your international trade operations into Global Trade 2.0 mode.

Customs is an old idea, you draw a line on the ground, and you can’t pass without paying. A pretty good business idea emanating from thousands of years ago.

Today customs is about collecting revenue based on tariffs on goods crossing a country’s borders, but also about a range of other priorities that involves checking imported and exported goods, collecting various types of other duties and taxes, enforcing regulations for security, sanctions, public health, technical product standards, intellectual property rights, ESG (Environment, social protection and Governance). Just to mention a few of the task of customs at borders.

At the same time all of these tasks needs to be done in ways that offers trade facilitation to compliant and low risk traders to foster the benefits of trade, namely growth, job creation and poverty reduction.

Let’s in summary say that today it is complicated to pass a border in a compliant way, and it is getting more complex by the day.

Some people has this year said to me, since I have spent my entire professional life of 41 years in customs, that I must have a field day now when customs is in the centre of world news. Let me say it like this, it is today a given fact that customs is treated as a strategic matter for c-levels of companies since it is that important for your business. However, I personally would have preferred it to get that status for other reasons than trade wars and increasing tariff levels. 

Today the border is not any longer a line on the ground, the new border starts when we pick up our smart phone to order something.

Trade and customs compliance is not anymore, a necessary burden, it has become a license to play. What is more interesting is that customs and trade compliance can be a major differentiator in the market. This can be your number one USP going forward. 

Today we manage data for customs and trade with AI powered solutions, end-to-end, from origin to final destination. The days of segmented and fragmented supply chains with too many service providers is long gone.

What I today say in advisory sessions with decision makers all around the world, is the following: Don’t get left behind. Don’t wait and see. It is not a strategy and the challenges we see for international trade is not going away, in fact we will have more changes in the next following years than we have seen in the last fifty.

The train is leaving the platform, and it is only travelling in one direction. If there ever was a time to travel in first class, to move fast and with determination, this is it.

See you at the next station.