2026 poised to be another rocky year for global trade

Uncertainty looms

- BRENDAN MURRAY

The global trading system, which is finishing up one of its most transformational years of the past century, heads into another facing more challenges to stability and growth.

Merchandise trade across the world held up relatively well through 2025, even as US President Donald Trump started erecting a tariff wall around the world’s largest economy. Data cited this week by shipping industry veteran John McCown show global container volumes grew 2.1 percent in October from a year earlier.

Yet beneath the overall resilience are shifting undercurrents: The US saw a 8 percent 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,” McCown wrote in a research note on Monday. After the US in 2024 saw a 15.2 per cent gain in container imports for the full year, “to say that the annual total for 2025 will be in diametric contrast is an understatement.”

Trump's trade threats were among the chief reasons for the rewiring of shipments, according to McCown. If 2025 was the year of the tariff, he wrote in a LinkedIn post, then 2026 will be the year of tariff consequences.

Other experts in recent weeks have said they anticipate more trade turmoil in the year ahead.