Figured it out... Devel::TraceUse assumes it is the first module in the @INC list:

...
        {
                local *INC     = [ @INC[ 1 .. $#INC ] ];
                my $start_time = [ gettimeofday() ];
                eval "package $package; require '$mod_name';";
                $elapsed       = tv_interval($start_time);
        }
...
[download]

Another approach would be to tie @INC to an array implementation which always puts the coderef used by Devel::TraceUse at the beginning of the array. That is, regardless of whatever array operations you performed on @INC, $INC[0] would always return TraceUse's coderef.

The real solution is to just redefine require if that's possible.