Navigating Tariffs and Uncertainties by Strengthening Supply Chains via Supplier Diversity

Tariffs and trade policy have moved from a forecast to a daily planning input. In Supplier.io’s 2026 State of Supplier Diversity Report, 54% of procurement and supplier diversity leaders say tariff and trade policy changes affect how they think about their supplier base, and 65% say supply chain resilience or near-shoring is a higher priority than it was a year ago.

Managing risk is a cornerstone of procurement, and the data says supplier diversity is now part of how teams do it.

Resilience Is Now the Top Reason Programs Exist

For the first time in nine years of research, a business driver outranks culture and values. Seventy-six percent of leaders say their program exists to improve supply chain competitiveness and resilience, up from 65% last year and 47% in 2019. Alignment with corporate culture, the top driver in every prior edition, now sits at 56%.

That shift reflects how programs are being used. Leaders describe a function that manages supplier risk, protects continuity, and reports on economic outcomes. It still tracks diverse spend (89% of programs do), but resilience is the headline.

Reduce Risk and Costs with Local and Small Suppliers

New tariffs and market volatility raise two worries: higher supply chain costs and shipping disruptions. Many organizations are responding by growing with local and small suppliers instead of relying only on long-distance sources.

The 2026 research shows this is already happening:

• 42% of leaders expanded their programs to include small or local suppliers more broadly this year.
• 37% increased their focus on supply chain resilience.
• 14% increased their focus on near-shoring or domestic sourcing specifically.

The spend data points the same way. In Supplier.io’s 2025 benchmark of 506 companies and $3.4 trillion in spend, small business spend was the largest category at 4.2% of total spend, more than women-owned (1.4%) and minority-owned (1.3%) combined.

As organizations learned during COVID, it is far easier to scale up a local supplier than to reorder materials from across the globe when supply chains are disrupted. Minimizing reliance on any single source or geography also gives teams more room to adapt as trade policy changes, and it shows a commitment to local communities.

The Strategic Asset of a Diverse Supplier Base

A broad supplier base adds flexibility. Companies with relationships across many suppliers can adjust to tariff and trade policy changes without major disruption, which supports continuous operations.

That flexibility lines up with what procurement leaders say they need. The Hackett Group’s 2026 Procurement Agenda and Key Issues Study names ensuring supply continuity and improving cost reduction as the top two procurement priorities for 2026. It also finds that teams expect workload to grow 8% while headcount and operating budgets fall. A diverse, well-documented supplier base helps lean teams cover more ground, with more sourcing options to call on when conditions shift.

Maturity matters too. Supplier.io’s benchmark found that companies with advanced programs spend about 20% more with diverse suppliers than companies with new programs, and best-in-class programs reach 16.6% small and diverse spend against a 7.6% average.

Better Data Makes Resilience Possible

You can only diversify what you can see. In the 2026 survey, 57% of leaders say their supplier data is incomplete, and 38% struggle to verify certifications. Data quality and accuracy ranks among the top three challenges for 37% of leaders.

AI is starting to close that gap. Fifty-four percent of leaders now use AI tools in their supplier program. Among them, 60% use it for supplier discovery and sourcing recommendations and 42% for data enrichment and cleansing. Hackett’s research shows the same momentum across procurement, with 43% of organizations actively pursuing AI-enabled technology deployment. Accurate supplier data is what makes those tools useful.

Supplier.io helps teams find local and regional suppliers, which can lower transportation costs, reduce carbon footprints, and speed up response times when plans change.

Supplier Diversity Also Adds Value

Diversity programs do more than reduce risk. Forty percent of leaders say their program exists to win new business and respond to RFPs, and 37% cite customer or contract requirements. In RFP responses, companies point to diverse and local suppliers as a way to deliver reliable, uninterrupted service while supporting communities, which matters most in industries where supply chain reliability is critical.

There is still room to prove that value. Fifty-five percent of leaders name economic impact in their communities as a top goal, but only 42% measure it. Programs that do measure it report stronger executive support: 77% rate it seven or higher on a 10-point scale, versus 64% of programs that don’t.

Looking Ahead: The Imperative for 2026 and Beyond

Programs are under real pressure. Fifty-three percent of leaders name political or regulatory change as a top-three challenge, and one in five had a budget reduced this year. Yet the programs are mature (80% are at least three years old), and the response so far has been repositioning rather than retreat.

The takeaway for 2026: treat supplier diversity as a strategic business tool for navigating trade uncertainty. Diversify your supplier base to shield against risk, tap into agile small businesses, and measure the results so the business case is clear.

Investing in supplier diversity means investing in the resilience and agility of your supply chain. Supplier.io helps you identify and integrate small, sustainable, and diverse suppliers, giving you more visibility into your supply chain and helping you reach your strategic goals.