Ralph Smith

Founder, Daviah IO. Building traceability infrastructure for supply chain compliance. Writing about the gap between policy and practice.

[Ralph Smith @codesmithr]

I sit with whether this shows me as an ally in the space, or just another tourist.

[Ralph Smith @codesmithr]

What living in China for over a decade and a half taught me is that I'm built for challenges — even when I didn't believe it in the moment. Starting a SaaS in a space I'm learning by speaking with professionals is much like my experience in Dalian.

[Ralph Smith @codesmithr]

The challenge here is two-fold — honoring that I've been a decent software engineer despite years of feeling subpar to colleagues, and accepting that I may never truly know what it's like to sit under the scrutiny of a compliance auditor.

[Ralph Smith @codesmithr]

Every year of delay in EUDR implementation costs nearly 50 million trees and 16.8 million tonnes of CO2. That's 100 trees a minute.
100 trees per minute deserves at least a second of consideration.

Commission review shuts down calls to roll back EU deforestation regulation | WWF

[Frans Köster @franskoster070]

#EUDR: European Commission just published simplification review of EU Deforestation Regulation. https://t.co/lBrhNdlyxT

[Ralph Smith @codesmithr]

So is the assumption that reclassification means business-as-usual? Or is the political fight really about who pays for compliance, not whether compliance happens?
The dates haven't moved.
A no-risk classification simplifies paperwork. It doesn't simplify sourcing.

[Ralph Smith @codesmithr]

A US "no-risk" classification under the EUDR doesn't make a US company's supply chain no-risk.
The Trump administration is pushing for reclassification. 32 House Democrats are pushing back. It's a political fight.
Here's the question around the US noise surrounding EUDR.

[Ralph Smith @codesmithr]

The EUDR covers wood, rubber, palm oil, soy, beef, coffee, cacao.
A US manufacturer sourcing palm oil from Indonesia or coffee from Brazil isn't suddenly running a no-risk supply chain because its corporate domicile got reclassified.
The risk lives in the sourcing geography.

[Ambassador Andrew Puzder @USAmbEU]

A deal is a deal. In August 2025, the EU Commission recognized that the U.S. poses negligible risk to global deforestation. Today I met with Commissioner @JessikaRoswall to urge the EU to act on that reality. The Commission's simplification review of the EU’s Deforestation Regulation, which ends April 30, should deliver real results, reducing regulatory compliance costs and costs for European consumers — not increasing bureaucracy. U.S. producers don't contribute to deforestation and shouldn't face costly geolocation requirements that increase the costs of their products with no environmental benefits. We are hopeful that the EU will address the very serious and legitimate concerns of U.S. producers and exporters.

[Ralph Smith @codesmithr]

The companies waiting for clarity are about to lose to the companies building anyway.
Every delay so far has been operational, not substantive. The requirement isn't softening. The window is.
Watch the cascade, not the political theatrics.

[Ralph Smith @codesmithr]

A telling detail in this week's EUDR news isn't the lobbying.
It's that TRACES — the EU's compliance platform — overloaded because of an automated submissions feature added at industry request.
Regulatory overreach?
No, it was operational reality catching up early.

[Ralph Smith @codesmithr]

Puzder pushing for relief, 32 House Democrats pushing back, the Commission holding the line...
What matters are dates!
The dates are real: Dec 30, 2026 for medium/large operators. June 30, 2027 for small/micro. The text isn't reopening.

[Ralph Smith @codesmithr]

The mid-market read: we're under the threshold, not our problem.
The actual situation: your customer is over the threshold, which makes it your problem.
Due diligence isn't something the cascade gives you time to build. It's something you build now.

[Ralph Smith @codesmithr]

182 US corporate groups are now directly subject to the EU's Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive.
Second-largest national presence in the data, behind only Germany. More than the UK.
A lot of US compliance teams read that as good news. It wasn't.

[Ralph Smith @codesmithr]

Here's why.
Covered companies are legally required to cascade due diligence down through their supply chains.
If you sell into a covered company — and 182 of those are headquartered in the US — your buyer is pushing CSDDD-grade requirements onto you. They have to.

[Ralph Smith @codesmithr]

This is a bill-of-materials problem, not a SKU problem.
Due diligence isn't something you start when the policy lands. It's something you build into the workflow right now — because by the time enforcement begins in 2027, the data either exists or it doesn't.

[Ralph Smith @codesmithr]

A shipment gets detained. A company scrambles. Documents pulled together under deadline pressure. Sometimes the goods clear. Often they don't.

What I keep noticing: these aren't bad actors. They're companies whose workflows weren't built to prove their business integrity.

[Ralph Smith @codesmithr]

EU Forced Labour Regulation takes full effect December 14, 2027.
One provision US compliance teams keep underestimating: component-level liability.
One bad part contaminates the entire product. The rubber in the tire. The cotton in the jacket lining. The whole product blocked.