What’s Next? Building a 10-Year Plan in an Era of Trade Uncertainty

Build your strategy around structural trends that are likely to persist.

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By L.Kenway BComm CPB Retired
This is the year you get all your ducks in a row! Start by starting ... and keep it simple. Consistency beats perfection.

Published July 29, 2026

WHAT'S IN THIS ARTICLE
The Real Question | 7 Strategic Planning Assumptions | Questions for Business Owners | Bottom Line

BACK TO >> What’s Happening: Canada’s Trade Shifts
RELATED >> How Tariffs Actually Move Supply Chains: A Case Study | What Section 338 Tariffs Mean For Your Business | CUSMA July 1 Review ... What Changes

The Real Question

No one can predict exactly how the next chapter of CUSMA will unfold. What business owners can do is build strategic plans based on assumptions that are supported by today’s economic and trade realities.

Rather than trying to predict every tariff announcement or trade negotiation, you can build your business plans around several long-term trends that are already reshaping North American trade.

Every time I hear Prime Minister Carney talk about "modernizing CUSMA", I find myself wondering what that actually looks like in practice. So I started looking for common themes in what economists, policy analysts, and trade experts are saying.


Seven Strategic Planning Assumptions For The Next Decade

The following planning assumptions I'm using for this article are informed by the views of organizations such as the Bank of Canada, Brookings Institution, EY, PwC Canada, and Global Affairs Canada.

A. External Environment Assumptions - What's Changing

1. Trade policy will remain volatile which is another way of saying trade uncertainty is the new normal.

Why analysts believe this?

Business owners should assume that North American trade policy will remain more volatile than it was during the first two decades of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement). Tariffs, sector-specific disputes, and periodic reviews are likely to become recurring business risks rather than exceptional events.

Planning implication: 
Build flexibility into pricing, sourcing, contracts, and investment decisions rather than assuming long periods of policy stability.

What this means if you're home-based: 
Large corporations respond to this by building flexibility into multi-year supplier contracts, hedging currency exposure, and running legal reviews before signing cross-border agreements. That's a bit overkill for your business ... but you can borrow the underlying habit. Build in your own version of flexibility by:

  • quoting in ranges instead of fixed long-term prices when a service touches cross-border costs;
  • avoiding locking into long contracts with a single supplier or platform; and 
  • building a small buffer into your pricing so a sudden cost or rule change doesn't wipe out your margin.

The goal isn't to predict the next announcement ... it's to make sure one announcement can't sink you.


2. Governments will play a larger role in trade as they increasingly link trade with economic security.

Why analysts believe this?

Trade policy is becoming intertwined with national security, critical minerals, advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, energy, food security, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence. Why? Because global supply chains for high-tech and essential goods have become major geopolitical leverage points.

Planning implication:
Monitor government industrial policies as closely as traditional market trends. Public policy will increasingly shape investment opportunities.

What this means if you're home-based: 
Large corporations respond to this by employing government-relations teams, tracking industrial policy announcements, and building lobbying relationships. You don't have a government-relations department ... but organizations like CFIB (Canadian Federation of Independent Business) do this on behalf of small businesses collectively, tracking policy and lobbying so individual owners don't have to. Bookmarking their updates, or joining, is the small-business equivalent of what a corporate GR team does for a large firm. Either way, keep a loose eye on programs and incentives aimed at your sector (small business grants, digital adoption credits, sector-specific tax changes) ... not to influence policy yourself, but to not miss what's available to you.


3. North American supply chains will remain important ... but will evolve to become more resilient.

Why analysts believe this?

Few analysts expect companies to abandon North American manufacturing. Instead, firms are expected to redesign supply chains to improve resilience, increase regional content, and reduce dependence on single suppliers or geopolitical (combination of geography and politics) hotspots.

Planning implication:
Diversify suppliers, develop second-source options, and evaluate where greater North American sourcing creates long-term competitive advantages.

What this means if you're home-based: 
Large corporations respond to this by qualifying second-source suppliers, mapping their supply chains for hidden single points of failure, and sometimes reshoring production entirely. You probably don't have a supply chain to redesign ... but you do have dependencies:

  • a single software vendor your practice runs on;
  • one supplier for your Etsy shop's materials;
  • one platform your whole business routes through. 

Apply the same logic as large corporations at your scale. How? Consider splitting your ordering for particular items between two suppliers now instead of one. Why? So the second one already knows your volume and can flex if the first one falls through. The same thinking applies to software and platforms. Know what it would take to move your client records or store to a different tool if you had to.


B. Business Implication Assumptions - How Firms Compete Today

4. Regulatory complexity will increase.

Why analysts believe this?

Whether through rules of origin, environmental standards, labour requirements, digital regulations, or customs reporting, cross-border business is becoming more complex.  Expect compliance costs to continue increasing as global trade agreements move away from free trade agreements to managed trade agreements. (For an example of managed trade, look at the steel quotas the federal government implemented last December.)

Planning implication: Treat trade compliance as a strategic capability rather than an administrative function. How? Build internal expertise (or work with advisors) to stay ahead of changing trade requirements instead of reacting after regulations change.

What this means if you're home-based: 
Large corporations respond to this by hiring trade compliance specialists and building internal legal teams to track rules of origin and customs reporting. You likely don't import or export at that scale, but you still have compliance exposure ... sales tax rules across provinces, contractor vs. employee classification, or invoicing requirements if you bill U.S. clients. Build a little expertise here yourself, or lean on an advisor ... an accountant or bookkeeper who tracks, updates, and implements compliance rules for you while recording your day-to-day transactions. Either way, the goal is the same as the corporation's ... know the rule before it costs you, not after.


5. Markets will become more diversified. Businesses with market diversification will have a competitive advantage over those that don't.

Why analysts believe this?

While the United States will remain Canada’s largest trading partner, most trade experts expect Canadian companies to continue expanding into Europe, Asia-Pacific, and other international markets to reduce concentration risk.

Historically, businesses optimized for efficiency. Just look at how integrated Canada's supply chains have become with the United States over the past 50 years. Going forward, as global trade restructures in real time, expect countries to move towards optimizing for resilience.

Planning implication:
Develop export strategies that reduce dependence on any single market while strengthening relationships with existing U.S. customers.

What this means if you're home-based: 
Large corporations respond to this by building export strategies and expanding into new international markets to reduce concentration risk. “Export strategy” probably isn’t on your radar, and it doesn’t need to be. But the underlying question still applies at your scale. How much of your income depends on one client, one platform, or one country’s customers? If 80% of your web design clients are in the U.S. and cross-border rules shift, that’s concentration risk ... the same risk this assumption describes, just measured in clients instead of export markets. Diversification, for you, might mean picking up a few Canadian clients, or simply knowing which platforms and payment rails would still work if U.S.-facing ones got harder to use. Personally, one of my criteria when I go app-hunting is whether it's Canadian. It's not the only factor, but it's one I weigh.


6. Competitive advantage moving forward will increasingly come from productivity and resilience ... not simply minimizing costs.

Why analysts believe this?
Higher labour costs, automation, AI, and advanced manufacturing technologies are changing how companies compete. Businesses that improve productivity and resiliency will be better positioned regardless of future tariff outcomes. Said another way, expect businesses to increasingly balance efficiency with resilience.

Planning implication:
Continue investing in technology, workforce skills, process improvement, and digital transformation to offset the higher costs of building more resilient supply chains.

What this means if you're home-based: 
Large corporations respond to this by investing in automation and workforce training. Your version of that investment might be smaller ... better bookkeeping software, an hour spent automating an invoicing task, or a course that saves you time every week going forward. The principle is the same at any size ... spending a little now on being more efficient or more resilient can matter more than just chasing the lowest-cost option today.


C. Strategic Planning Method Assumption - Move To Scenario Planning

7. Scenario planning should replace single-point forecasting.

Why analysts believe this?
The greatest strategic mistake is assuming one outcome. Instead, businesses should prepare for several plausible futures ... including renewed trade stability, prolonged uncertainty, or increased protectionism.

Planning implication:
Develop contingency plans for multiple trade scenarios and establish trigger points that determine when strategic adjustments should be made.

What this means if you're home-based: 
Large corporations respond to this by running formal scenario-planning exercises with modeled outcomes and trigger points. You can do a simplified version at your kitchen table ...

🦆 Solo CEO Moves
Pick your two or three biggest “what if” risks (a key client leaves, a cross-border rule changes, a platform you rely on shuts down), and write one sentence for each on what you’d actually do if it happened. That’s the whole exercise — you don’t need the spreadsheet, just the answer already thought through before you need it.


Questions for Business Owners

As you update your strategic plan, or perhaps create one for the very first time, ask:

  • Which assumptions about North American trade no longer hold?
  • How dependent are you on a single customer, supplier, or market?
  • Which risks deserve contingency plans today rather than reactions tomorrow?
  • What investments would strengthen your competitiveness under almost any trade scenario?
  • If trade became more difficult tomorrow, what would you wish you had started doing today?
Read How Tariffs Actually Move Supply Chains: A Case Study here >

Bottom Line

A good 10-year strategy isn't built on predicting the next tariff announcement. It's built on assumptions that remain useful across many possible futures.

The organizations that thrive over the next decade will not necessarily be the ones that guess right about where trade policy lands. They'll be the ones that built strategies flexible enough to hold up whether that guess is right or wrong.

If there's one assumption to revisit above the rest, it's this. For decades, businesses optimized for efficiency. Going forward, resilience matters just as much. You can see that shift running through nearly every assumption above ... in diversified sourcing, in markets beyond the U.S., in supply chains built for redundancy rather than just speed.

Take supply chains as the clearest example. For decades, "just-in-time" models minimized cost above all else. That started changing during and after the pandemic, as each country's weak points were exposed. Expect more businesses to keep accepting higher costs in exchange for redundancy, shorter supply chains, or geographic diversification ... not as a one-time correction, but as the new baseline.

🦆 Solo CEO Moves

  • Before updating your strategic plan, step back and examine your current business model itself. Ask yourself, "Does it still work in today's economic environment?" A good way to determine this is to ask yourself, "If I was starting my business today, what would I change? What would I do differently?" The answers often reveal assumptions that no longer fit the world your business operates in.
  • Keep an eye on the CUSMA negotiations. Greer told Congress he expects to have options available by the end of this year. If you hear words like TRQs (tariff rate quota), that's a signal we are moving away from a free trade agreement to a managed trade agreement.


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