The global trading system was turned upside down by President Donald Trump in 2025. The global trading system was turned upside down by President Donald Trump in 2025. The new year promises to reveal the results of that upheaval, along with more challenges to stability and growth as American trade threats rewire the world.

Merchandise traffic across the globe held up relatively well this year even as Trump started erecting a tariff wall around the US. Yet beneath the overall resilience, the US saw a 8% contraction in inbound volumes while imports into Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and India all showed robust growth.

“World container supply chains have already begun to adapt and reconfigure trading patterns,” shipping industry veteran John McCown wrote in a research note. After the US in 2024 saw a 15.2% gain in container imports for the full year, “to say that the annual total for 2025 will be in diametric contrast is an understatement.”

While Trump and his aides touted deals throughout the year as country after country appeared to bend to his will, there was significantly less there than advertised. Most of those accords were based on threatened tariffs declared illegal by a US appeals court (and likely soon the Supreme Court) and included nebulous investment pledges with little fine print. The new year may see more of those nations resisting US trade demands just as China further positions itself to counter any agreements that undermine its interest.

More recently, the Trump administration singled out the European Union and India, saying that contentious talks are set to spill into the new year. A Trump aide also threatened retaliation against the EU for what Washington considers to be excessive regulation of American tech companies.

If 2025 was the year of the tariff, McCown wrote in an online post, then 2026 will be the year of tariff consequences.

Source: Bloomberg

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