Creating a Global Trading System with Multiple Alliances

Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney, gave a quietly brilliant speech the other day about building new alliances. Soon after, Ursula von der Leyen announced that the European Union is on the brink of a historic agreement with India, linking two of the world’s largest economies.
One of the most encouraging responses to Trump’s nationalist nonsense is that the rest of the world is not freezing—it’s reorganizing. New alliances are emerging that don’t depend on unanimity among all advanced economies. Instead, they resemble independent suspension: parallel paths for cooperation that keep moving even when one wheel hits a pothole. The result is a global economy that is less fragile and less hostage to the domestic politics of any single nation.
Trump and his toxic isolationist policies will eventually dissolve. But they may also prove catalytic—accelerating the emergence of a new world order that is, paradoxically, healthier.
It’s easy to imagine that the EU, India, China, the United States, or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations will each, at different moments, retreat from global trade under nationalist pressure. If the global economy depends on a single consensus, those retreats are destabilizing. But if it rests on overlapping agreements—multiple alliances that don’t all hinge on everyone’s approval—the system becomes far more resilient.

Nationalist, anti-trade sentiment will ebb and flow. A more modular, redundant system of trade relationships won’t eliminate that tendency—but it will blunt its impact, preserving growth, cooperation, and prosperity over the long run.