On 24 September 2026, FreightWaves covered Netstock's 2026 Supply Chain Planning Benchmark Report, built from a survey of more than 2,500 customers worldwide plus more than 150 SMB users with under $250 million in annual revenue. The desk frames 2026 less as a single shock year and more as overlapping pressures: supplier timing, freight cost, raw-material cost, and demand shifts.
Supplier lead-time swings ranked as the biggest inventory planning challenge for 29% of respondents, ahead of raw material and input costs (23%), freight and shipping costs (22%), and demand shifts (21%). When respondents could name multiple pressures, supplier timing appeared among the top three concerns for 77%, freight for 72%, raw materials for 66%, and demand shifts for 57%.
China remains central, but lead-time complaints worsened. In 2025, 61% of SMBs sourcing from China cited long supplier lead times versus 52% elsewhere. This year the figures are 75% and 42%, expanding the gap from 9 to 33 percentage points. Among businesses sourcing from the US, China, Canada, and Mexico, the share sourcing from at least two regions rose from 45% (2024) to 49% (2025) to 55% this year. Preference for offshore suppliers fell from 31% to 21% over the same span, while domestic preference edged up from 19% to 23%. Only 35% of US SMB respondents said they changed suppliers because of tariffs in the prior 12 months.
FreightWaves also notes that as of 24 September, FreightWaves SONAR's China-to-US Import Ocean TEUs Index (IOTI.CHNUSA) has been averaging below the prior three years on a 14-day moving average. Netstock adds that 53% of SMBs are ordering earlier or buying larger quantities ahead of peak season, yet only 44% of those early orderers reported service levels above 90%, compared with 62% among companies that were not ordering earlier.