2025 A MILESTONE FOR UAE'S NON-OIL FOREIGN TRADE

Despite global tariffs and transit disruption, the UAE set historic trade records

- BY DR THANI BIN AHMED AL ZEYOUDI | Special to Gulf News

Trade isn't always the most newsworthy topic. The movement of goods and services between nations is such an accepted and necessary component of the global economy that it only makes the headlines when it suddenly ceases, or at least slows to the point when consumers, retailers and manufacturers are adversely affected.

This has been the case only a handful of times in the last 30 years. The Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, the global financial crisis a decade later and, from 2020, the supply-chain disruptions of Covid all caused global trade to decline by at least 10 per cent.

While 2025 hasn't quite reached that level of fracture, it's been another year where trade has made headlines for the wrong reasons, with tariffs and trade disputes erupting between key markets and impacting some of the primary levers of the economy. According to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the value of imports affected by new tariffs between October 2024 to October 2025 reached $2.64 trillion, a fourfold increase on the same period a year earlier.

In parallel, the difficulties of transit through both the Suez and Panama canals albeit for differing reasons has caused oceangoing cargo to select longer, costlier routes and further impede the global trading system.