Global Trade
By Jason Kumpf · June 9, 2026
For decades, the global supply chain was engineered for one thing: lowest landed cost. Single-source the cheapest supplier, hold as little inventory as possible, and let efficiency do the rest. Since 2020, that model has met its limits. And resilience has become as much a source of advantage as cost.
A run of disruptions exposed how brittle a hyper-optimized chain can be. When a single supplier, port, or region stalls, a just-in-time system has no slack to absorb the shock. The savings of lean sourcing can be erased in weeks by a stockout that sends customers to a competitor.
Building resilience does not mean hoarding inventory everywhere. It means visibility into where your real dependencies lie, diversification so no single point can halt you, regional buffers close to demand, and the habit of planning for plausible shocks before they arrive. It is a discipline, not a warehouse.
The firms that kept delivering through recent disruptions did not just avoid losses; many took share from rivals who could not. Reliability, it turns out, is a feature customers will pay for and remember. In a volatile decade, the ability to keep your promises is itself a differentiator.
Optimize for cost, but build for shocks. The most competitive supply chains of the next decade will be the ones that bend without breaking.
Jason Kumpf is a global business executive. Head of Revenue, U.S. at Razorpay Global Payments and a Go Global Business Expert who helps companies grow across borders. He works as a CRO, board advisor, angel investor, and speaker.