Reshoring: What Procurement Leaders Need To Get Right

Reshoring made its way into boardroom discussions during the first Trump administration, framed largely around national interest, jobs, and reducing dependence on overseas manufacturing.

At the time, it was discussed as a strategic option, important, but not yet urgent.

That changed in 2020.

The pandemic didn’t just disrupt supply chains; it exposed deep vulnerabilities. Highly optimized, multi-tier, multi-region supply networks proved more fragile than many leaders could have imagined. 

Factory shutdowns, material shortages, and long lead times turned what had been theoretical risks into on-the-ground crises. At this point, reshoring moved from a long-term plan to a practical response to very real pain.

Reshoring Is Not About Ideology 

In 2026, the second year of the second Trump administration, reshoring (along with nearshoring and friendshoring) remains firmly on the agenda for procurement and supply chain leaders. But while it retains political and nationalistic appeal, reinforced by policy signals, incentives, and geopolitical tension, the focus has shifted for organizations. Reshoring is not about ideology, and leaders have to ensure the economics of reshoring delivers expected business outcomes.

Procurement leaders are asking harder questions, and rightly so. Is the effort worth the cost? Which categories make economic sense to bring closer to home, and which do not? Does the place have the capabilities to support your needs? Is there enough labor availability? Importantly, will reshoring protect margins, service levels, and competitiveness in the long run?

Resilience: The Success Metric

Today, in fact, since the pandemic, resilience has become the real measure of success.

So, the question to ask really is: will reshoring improve resilience?

Companies have burned their fingers by assuming that it automatically translates to greater resilience and responsiveness and found themselves battling another set of problems and disruptions instead.

The reality is that geography does not reduce risk, and reshoring is not a universal, one-size-fits-all fix. While in some cases, it strengthens control and agility, oftentimes, it introduces new cost pressures or capacity constraints or supplier challenges. 

A Broader Framework for Resilience 

None of this means that reshoring is a bad choice best avoided.

What it means is that it shouldn’t be treated as a silver bullet. Meaning, it can be one of the tools to manage risk as part of a broader resilience strategy, not the only one.

That’s what many procurement and supply chain leaders are doing.

• They’re expanding multi-sourcing programs instead of relying on a single supplier, no matter how trusted and reliable the supplier has been.
• They’re holding more inventory closer to end customers to reduce long transit times.
• They’re putting stronger governance in place so that customer demand, supplier limitations, and cost trade-offs are all part of a single decision-making process, rather than considering each in isolation.

Designing a Suitable Network

Treating reshoring as a binary choice, i.e. global versus domestic network, misses the reality most teams are dealing with. The real challenge — and work — lies in designing supply networks that can balance cost, risk, flexibility, and speed in an environment that is rarely still.

The experience of the pandemic continues to influence how these decisions are made. When supply chains faced on-the-ground crises, the breakdowns weren’t entirely a result of where suppliers were located. They were about what companies could see, how quickly teams could coordinate, and how fast they could respond when conditions changed. 

When reshoring is combined with actions that improve traceability, enhance supplier and input data, and give teams tighter operational control, it genuinely improves resilience and delivers the best results. 

In many cases, the real advantage comes more from end-to-end visibility than just geography. Knowing what’s happening across the supply network empowers procurement teams to make informed decisions and act on them quickly. These capabilities hold up far longer than any political narrative. 

Unified, Agentic AI-Powered Systems 

For procurement leaders, the real shift is recognizing that visibility and control don’t come from moving production closer to home alone but from having the information, alerts and recommendations in real time.

That’s where intelligent, unified source-to-pay systems, supported by agentic AI , make a big difference. When sourcing, contracts, purchasing, suppliers, and spend all sit in one environment, teams have a holistic view and don’t have to piece together what’s happening from multiple systems. 

Check Out GEP’s – AI Powered Procurement Software

Agentic AI takes it another step ahead, orchestrating workflows across the source-to-pay process in real time. This means procurement teams don’t have to rely on static reports or manual checks — intelligent agents monitor activity across sourcing, contracts, purchasing, suppliers, and risk, flagging issues as they emerge, keeping processes aligned as conditions change, and taking actions within established guardrails. An AI-led setup makes reshoring easier to manage in practice. It helps procurement stay on top of things, which ultimately drives supply security and resilience.

Getting It Right

Cost and policy pressures on their own don’t make for successful reshoring. In 2026, reshoring won’t come with a clear playbook — it will still be a work in progress. Some companies will build real advantage by bringing the right activities closer to demand and supporting those moves with stronger digital control. Others will find they’ve added cost and complexity without gaining much in return.

The difference comes down to sound judgment and discipline. Leaders who are selective about what they move, careful about how they manage it, and clear on what they aim to achieve from the shift will see outcomes that justify the investment and effort. 

For more, read the GEP Outlook Report 2026 now.