Tariffs forcing nearshoring, regional sourcing, experts say

Borderlands Mexico is a weekly rundown of developments in the world of United States-Mexico cross-border trucking and trade. This week: Tariffs forcing nearshoring, regional sourcing, experts say; Kuehne+Nagel boosts cross-border capacity in El Paso; and Motherson invests $50M in Mexico plant to supply Audi. 

HOUSTON — At the 4th annual Houston International Maritime Conference (HIMC25), logistics and trade executives said that ongoing shifts in U.S. tariff policy are forcing companies to rethink sourcing, pricing strategies and long-term supply chain planning.

The Tuesday panel — titled “The Tariff Effect: Rethinking Sourcing, Manufacturing, and Infrastructure in an Evolving Trade Landscape” — featured representatives from Igloo, IKEA, and DSV alongside the National Retail Federation (NRF).

HIMC25, held Sunday through Wednesday in downtown Houston, brought together almost 900 executives, ocean carriers, petrochemical producers, economists and trade stakeholders.

Panel moderator Jonathan Gold, NRF’s vice president of supply chain and customs policy, opened the discussion by stressing a basic but often overlooked point: “A tariff is a tax paid by the U.S. importer.”

“To start off, I really want to try and set the current state of trade and tariffs,” Gold said. “I know everybody’s head is spinning from the constant social media posts on new tariffs, which tends to be followed by official notices of guidance days later. I know this makes it very difficult for companies to plan and prepare for tariff changes that seem to happen almost immediately.”

Panelists described tariff management as a round-the-clock challenge for customs teams and brokers.

Pete Mento, director customs and international trade at global freight forwarder DSV, said constant rule changes have created “a never-ending” stream of reclassifications, regulatory reviews and pricing recalculations.

He warned that customs brokers are facing heavy scrutiny and rising workloads as importers look for clarity on rapidly changing tariff schedules.

“For an importer, they depend on a broker for that type of advice. They should depend on a broker for that type of advice, and a broker should give it. You don’t want to be wrong,” Mento said.

“The man hours that have been added to an entry, the extra amount of time, and then just the time keeping up with everything, the constant changes, it’s been very difficult. I tell everyone, hug a broker, right? You know, I know I could use one. Hug a broker and let them know that you appreciate what they’re doing because it has been positive and ridiculous.”

Igloo’s international logistics and compliance manager, Cris Borzani, said ongoing tariffs and pricing changes have made it difficult to keep leadership informed.

“One of the biggest challenges is actually communicating this information with leadership, knowing that information changes on the fly. I’ve caught myself writing emails, and midway through the email, I get a notification that tariffs have either gone up or gone down,” Borzani said.

Christopher Smith, who leads customs and trade advisory efforts for IKEA North America, said legacy systems are not built to manage layered tariffs — driving dependence on brokers to manually apply additional duties to tens of thousands of entries each year.

“When you’re doing close to 80,000 entries a year, that’s a big reliance on your broker,” Smith said. “The other big one I would say is trying to manage management’s expectations, especially with tweeted information, where it’s unofficial and … maybe weeks or months of hope. Walking in in the morning to get the email of, “what does this tweet mean to us?” Nothing yet, because it’s, until I get the Federal Register with the actual information to be able to do an analysis on what the impact could be.”

Panelists said many companies have spent several years absorbing tariff costs rather than passing them on to customers — but those strategies are being exhausted.

IKEA, for example, is now projecting more than $400 million in additional tariff-related costs this year in the U.S. market alone.

“It can take us over two years to bring up a new supplier, so we haven’t seen any major supply chain shift,” Smith said. “We’re starting to see that now that things have kind of settled out a little bit with the current reciprocal tariff rates. But we’re actually looking at potential shifts to Europe because of the U.S.-European deal. We’re actually getting panicked questions from some of our purchasers in their landed cost simulations because they’re not used to seeing Europe come up as a better landed cost than Asia Pacific.”

Meanwhile, Igloo described shifting production out of China into Cambodia, Thailand, and increasingly the U.S. While alternative sourcing has helped mitigate some duties, new tariffs on Southeast Asian goods mean “there’s no safe harbor anymore,” Borzani said.

“I feel like there’s no safe space at this point. It’s just trying to mitigate these tariffs as much as possible,’ Borzani said. “One thing I would suggest is try to grow your relationship with your vendors. If you have some in China, they might have a plus one or a sister company out in Cambodia or Thailand. You might want to really focus on those kinds of relationships, and also you have your drawbacks as well.”

Borzani said one of the biggest challenges with outsourcing to Cambodia is the vessel scheduling.

“I’ve worked with multiple ocean carriers that are opening up new trade lanes to focus more on Cambodia, these South and Southeast Asian countries,” Borzani said.

Mento said the U.S. government’s recent trade policies signals a push to economically isolate China and encourage North American regional manufacturing under USMCA. But shifting sourcing is time-consuming and complex: labor capacity, component availability, and transportation infrastructure in Southeast Asia often lag behind China’s.

Still, Mexico is emerging as the strongest nearshoring winner, panelists said — with Chinese manufacturers themselves opening new factories there to keep access to the U.S. market, Mento said.

“Mexico has become the sneaky favorite,” Mento said, calling its industrial growth “like a weed right now.”

Panelists also warned that U.S. Customs and Border Protection is leaning more heavily on AI-driven enforcement, including automated audits and transaction reviews.

CBP is now issuing more CF-28 requests — which are used by CBP to solicit factual information from the importer.and publishing the names of companies found to be in violation — a major shift in enforcement visibility.

This means companies that rely on Delivered Duty Paid (DDP) arrangements with overseas suppliers may face increased legal exposure if valuation, country-of-origin declarations or supplier information are inaccurate.

“Trade compliance comes first,” Mento said. “This is now about keeping your company’s name out of the paper.”

Kuehne+Nagel, the world’s largest 3PL, has expanded its cross-border logistics footprint in El Paso, Texas, adding a 217,431-square-foot facility next to its existing site to support growing U.S.-Mexico trade flows.

The new bonded warehouse includes 53 dock doors, 65 trailer spaces, cross-dock capabilities and vertically racked storage to handle increased northbound and southbound freight volumes amid ongoing nearshoring-driven demand, according to a news release.

The company said its previous 362,992-square-foot facility reached full capacity within a year, underscoring the need for scalable growth at the border.

Headquartered in Switzerland, Kuehne+Nagel has over 80,000 employees at 1,300 locations in 100 countries.

India-based auto parts supplier Motherson Group will invest $50 million to expand its plant in Zitlaltepec, Tlaxcala, Mexico, adding a new paint area and six injection molding machines to produce components for Audi’s Q5 and EQ7 models, according to Mexico Business News.

The project is expected to create 150 direct jobs and 300 indirect jobs, with construction scheduled for completion between April and July 2026.

State officials said the investment will boost regional manufacturing capacity and support local employment, with recruitment set to begin in the second quarter of 2026 through job fairs and digital platforms.

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