Artificial intelligence in foreign trade was the central theme of Comex Tech Forum 2026, an event now in its fourth edition held at the Transamerica Expo Center in São Paulo. The gathering brought together around 4,000 participants and more than 30 speakers from logistics, supply chain, industry, infrastructure, finance and management.
The forum gained added significance amid intense turbulence in the global landscape. Geopolitical crises, including conflicts in the Middle East involving the United States and Iran, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and United States tariff policies, have caused sharp shifts in global supply chains and pushed up maritime freight prices.
AI as a strategic tool for the sector
Alan Schmidt, commercial director of Logcomex, a technology platform focused on foreign trade, explained how artificial intelligence has been incorporated into the sector.
According to Schmidt, AI is expanding like a wave, moving from areas such as software development, design and engineering into segments including legal, human resources, marketing and now foreign trade.
Schmidt said foreign trade and supply chain had always been a market with a great deal of data, but not necessarily information with the best visibility. He said the data existed but was often fragmented across different stages or databases.
For the Logcomex director, the ability to consolidate and interpret that data is what makes AI so valuable to the sector. He said that if companies can deliver historical and more predictive information, they bring more accurate data, allowing clients to make better decisions.
He also said that despite technological advances, the sector is not shielded from external instability, but is significantly better prepared to anticipate and react to it.
The concept of Global Trade 2.0
One of the featured speakers at the event was Lars Karlsson, global director of Maersk, one of the world's largest shipping companies. He said a new business model was emerging, called Global Trade 2.0, driven by intensive use of artificial intelligence.
Maersk is a Danish shipping and logistics conglomerate and one of the largest container shipping operators in the world.
According to Karlsson, this model anticipates better routes, more accurate forecasts, greater security, faster operations and more efficient decisions on costs, all processed and guided by AI data.
Karlsson also highlighted Brazil's strategic role in this new landscape, pointing to the Port of Santos as a central point in global negotiations. The Port of Santos, located on Brazil's southeastern coast, is the largest port in Latin America and a key gateway for the country's foreign trade.
He said the sector will be better prepared to handle complex geopolitical scenarios as artificial intelligence advances, noting that it is being progressively implemented across foreign trade.
Port of Santos and antitrust approval
The event was also a venue for discussion of the Port of Santos in the context of the mega-auction for Tecon Santos 10.
According to coverage cited at the event, Brazil's Administrative Council for Economic Defense, known as Cade, approved an antitrust agreement between Maersk and Mediterranean Shipping Company, or MSC, to enable investments at the site, opening space for private companies to share the port area.
Cade is Brazil's antitrust regulator, responsible for reviewing mergers and agreements that could restrict competition. The agency had assessed that dominance by the two shipping giants could create risks of monopolization.
