Tariffs Are Changing Fast. Is Your Product Data Keeping Up?
Global trade policy has never moved at this pace. Since April 2025, companies importing goods into the US have been navigating a 10% blanket tariff on all imports, with country-specific rates reaching as high as 54% for certain regions. The rules keep shifting — and they're not just a supply chain problem.
For global organizations managing regulated products, every tariff update carries a secondary obligation that's easy to underestimate: the need to update product classifications, country-of-origin declarations, packaging content, and labeling across every market you operate in. Get that wrong, even accidentally, and the consequences are serious. US Customs penalties for misclassification due to gross negligence can reach between 25% and 40% of the domestic value of the merchandise. A 2025 PwC report found that one in four global companies faced tariff-related fines in 2024 due to inadequate customs processes.
This isn't a theoretical risk. It's already happening at scale.
The Real Compliance Challenge Isn't the Label — It's the Data Behind It
Most organizations, when faced with a tariff change, reach for their labels first. That instinct isn't wrong, but it mistakes the symptom for the disease. Labeling is the final output. The problem starts much earlier, in the underlying product data that labels draw from.
Before any packaging artwork can be updated, organizations need to confirm that Harmonised System (HS) product classifications are correct, country-of-origin data is consistent across systems, import and export documentation reflects the new reality, and market-specific regulatory disclosures have been updated in every territory.
For a company managing thousands of SKUs across multiple markets, this is not a small task. PwC's Global Compliance Survey found that 85% of respondents said compliance requirements have become more complex in the last three years — and that complexity isn't easing. When businesses switch ingredient or component sourcing to avoid new tariffs, they must also update labeling, packaging, and documentation to reflect the changes — adding a layer of administrative burden on top of the operational disruption they were already managing.
Fragmented Data Makes This Exponentially Harder
Here's the structural problem that tariff volatility exposes: in most organizations, regulated product information doesn't live in one place. Product teams hold specifications. Compliance teams manage regulatory documentation. Packaging teams control artwork and templates. When a tariff change requires updates, those updates have to travel manually across all of these functions — via email chains, shared spreadsheets, and informal workflows.
According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, 40% of organizations are still relying on manual processes to adapt to new and changing regulations, with significant knock-on effects on both speed and accuracy. The consequence, in a labeling context, is that outdated classifications or incorrect country-of-origin information can persist on packaging long after a regulatory change has come into effect — creating silent compliance exposure that only surfaces when a shipment is held or a penalty is issued.
According to PwC's Global Compliance Survey 2025, 72% of executives say the increasing complexity of compliance requirements over the last three years has negatively impacted their company's profitability. Fragmented product data is a significant part of why.
What Regulatory Confidence Actually Looks Like
Organizations that manage this well share a common approach: they treat regulated product information as a controlled, centralized asset rather than something distributed informally across teams and systems. When a tariff regulation changes, they update the relevant data once — and that update propagates automatically into labeling, packaging, and documentation outputs.
This isn't just an operational efficiency gain. It's a risk management posture. It means compliance teams have genuine oversight of what's on every label in every market, rather than working from the assumption that upstream teams have kept things current.
How Veraciti™ Helps
Veraciti™ is built for exactly this kind of regulatory environment. By centralizing regulated product data, it gives organizations a single source of truth for the classifications, declarations, and compliance content that flow through to labels and packaging. When an HS code changes or a country-of-origin declaration needs updating, that change can be made once in Veraciti™ and reflected consistently across every output — rather than manually chased across teams and systems.
The result is faster response to regulatory change, fewer errors in packaging and documentation, and genuine confidence that what appears on your labels is accurate and compliant — in every market, every time.
Trade policy will keep moving. The organizations best placed to manage it are those that have already built the infrastructure to respond.
Ready to take control of your regulated product data?
Download Kallik's 2026 Global Labeling Readiness Report, or speak to one of our labeling and artwork experts today by emailing enquiries@kallik.com, calling +44 (0) 1827 318100, or filling in our contact form.
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