In August 2025, the U.S.-EU Framework Agreement on Reciprocal, Fair, and Balanced Trade was announced, aiming to modernize the economic relationship between the world’s two largest trading blocs. It promises to ease long-standing tensions over market access, and the implications are particularly significant for agriculture.
In short, the agreement eliminates tariffs on a range of high-value commodities, including tree nuts, dairy, pork, fruits, and seafood. It opens European markets that have typically been constrained and less accessible. For many producers, this kind of market access is what they have sought for years, offering an unprecedented chance to diversify exports and grow their businesses.
Yet, while lifted tariffs create new opportunities, regulatory challenges remain. Compliance with European environmental regulations will continue to shape market entry, and the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) is top of mind for many. The reality is successful trade between the United States and EU will not only depend on open trade channels, but on how effectively U.S. exporters can navigate the complex web of EU compliance requirements.
The compliance reality
The EUDR is one of the most stringent environmental compliance frameworks introduced in recent years, and it presents a complex challenge for U.S. exporters. The regulation requires that certain commodities including soy, cattle, palm oil, wood, coffee, and cocoa, be verified as free from deforestation and forest degradation.
To meet the regulation as it stands, exporters must provide:
· Geolocation data linking commodities to specific plots of land
· Evidence of compliance with local laws in the country of origin
· A due diligence statement before the products enter the EU market
While this may sound simple, it can be a complex process. Take, for example, a U.S. coffee trader sourcing beans from hundreds of smallholders across Latin America. Many of these farms lack GPS mapping or digital records. Without accurate, verifiable data on land use and deforestation status, exporters risk falling short of the original EUDR requirements. Non-compliance carries real consequences with fines of up to 4% of annual turnover, confiscation of goods, loss of market access and forfeiture of profits associated with non-compliant shipments.
It becomes even more complex when we recognize that the EUDR is still subject to change. Many businesses are waiting to hear whether simplifications to the regulation will be approved, reducing documentation pressure and providing an enforcement delay.
Yet regardless of whether all organizations need to submit due diligence statements, non-compliance at any point in the supply chain will cause severe delays to imports. It’s therefore crucial that this regulation is recognized not as a hurdle, but an important marker of trade readiness and corporate responsibility in an era of climate scrutiny.
Data-driven solutions: Technology as a compliance enabler
An important factor to consider with the EUDR is that compliance is retrospective, requiring verification that no deforestation has taken place since December 2020. This raises a practical question for exporters: how can historical and present-day compliance be evidenced at scale? Without credible data, the very products that now enjoy tariff relief may be blocked at EU ports.
Fortunately, advances in technology are offering pathways to navigate these challenges. Using satellite monitoring, it’s possible to detect potential deforestation risks by continuously observing production areas and flagging changes in forest cover. With historical land-use analysis, it’s also possible to map how land has been managed over time to help validate whether a commodity originates from deforestation-free land. These data-points to be turned into due diligence outputs, ensuring that exporters can quickly provide verifiable documentation to regulators and trading partners.
AI is also proving invaluable for collating data across a number of these endpoints, synthesizing it into actionable insights. It can elevate the existing data, piecing together the complex information to draw out connections so that sourcing regions that infringe on EUDR stipulations are no longer opaque and hard to analyze. From there, businesses can then identify risk zones, assess alternative sourcing options, and generate proactive compliance strategies.
The path forward
Tariff relief offers U.S. exporters a rare opportunity to expand into the European market. But the true value of that access lies in their ability to meet regulatory expectations. EUDR is not an optional overlay, it is a central condition of doing business in the EU moving forward.
In practical terms, tariff relief may open the door, but only EUDR compliance determines who gets to walk through it. Without verifiable data, new trade opportunities could be skipped at the border. For U.S. exporters, the real test of trade readiness lies not in tariff policy, but in data-backed compliance. It’s crucial that they invest today in the technologies that will help them transform risk into resilience, to prepare for the next EUDR updates and looming compliance deadlines.
