Tariffs are the top concern plaguing executives in 2026—and they even rank above the impacts of international conflicts like the war in the Middle East.
That’s according to an annual Political Risk Survey Report by Willis which drew upon responses from 57 individuals in the manufacturing, technology, retail and real estate sectors across Europe, North America and Asia.
Conducted as the war in Iran was breaking out and logistical constraints began to arise from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the survey revealed that 61 percent of executives believe the impacts of heightened duties are the still the most difficult factor to manage in today’s business climate. An equal number reported that their company had suffered the adverse financial impacts of the tariffs.
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Underscoring the growing concern around trade policy over geopolitical conditions, the report showed that less than half (46 percent) of executives selected “conflict in the Middle East” as one of their top three concerns.
Then, there’s the concept of “grey-zone aggression,” which ranked as a related area of concern for 61 percent of firms, denoting actions that happen in the middle ground between war and peace. Economic coercion or retaliation, including sanctions both official and ad-hoc, threats or tariffs, or export embargoes for key commodities were highly concerning possibilities for three-fifths of those surveyed.
Also notable, according to analysts, was the share of respondents that said credit and political risk insurable losses from geopolitical events was the highest in nine years of the survey. For the third year in a row, related losses came to over $250 million, as the cost of managing geopolitical risk has ticked up with interest on insurance increasing.
Companies operating across the globe—not just in the U.S.—are also worried about the evolution of political and economic policy. In fact, 62 percent of the survey respondents’ companies are located in Europe or Asia.
Nearly two-fifths of respondents said they believe their companies are at a greater risk because of the policy decisions of their home government, which could include responses to U.S. tariffs. The vast majority (84 percent) said they are considering or actively preparing for a future where their business needs to be structurally divided between Eastern and Western markets.
“It’s surprising that while conflict in the Middle East dominates the headlines, the effects of tariffs continue to dominate business concerns,” said Willis director of political risk analytics Sam Wilkin.
But that finding is in line with some of the other trends seen in the survey, he explained, as political risk is no longer “simply a map of war zones,” but “a map of contested systems” for trade, technology, information and domestic politics.
“For globalized business, political risk is becoming less about exposure to a handful of unstable places, and more about exposure to an increasingly unstable world order,” he added.
