Rebeca Grynspan, Secretary-General, UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
Despite heightened trade tensions and policy volatility, global trade and growth demonstrated notable resilience in 2025. Supply chains continued to adjust, markets remained connected, even as pressures weighed more heavily on smaller and more vulnerable economies.
Uncertainty has not disappeared in 2026. Strategic rivalry and policy adjustments continue to test the international trading environment. Yet recent developments offer two concrete reminders that cooperation remains both possible and consequential.
These signals matter beyond commercial flows. They affect development prospects and broader stability. Even in a more complex geopolitical context, governments retain the capacity to choose structured engagement over fragmentation.
The United States’ renewal of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, together with the HOPE and HELP arrangements for Haiti, offers one illustration. At a time of wider policy volatility, the renewal brings welcome predictability to trade relationships that directly affect development prospects. The continuity of AGOA and related preferential arrangements is central to the longer-term certainty on which investment and job creation depend.
For 32 sub-Saharan African countries, 21 of them least developed, AGOA supports export sectors in textiles, agriculture and light manufacturing. The continuation of HOPE and HELP remains equally important for Haiti’s export industries operating under fragile conditions. In both cases, these exports represent a modest share of total United States imports, yet they underpin employment, foreign exchange earnings and fiscal stability in the beneficiary economies.
Across much of Africa, predictable market access shapes macroeconomic resilience as much as commercial performance. When access is stable, governments can plan, firms can invest and workers can build livelihoods with greater certainty.
Decisions such as these illustrate how large economies influence stability beyond their own borders. Development-oriented trade policy strengthens the durability of the system as a whole.
A similar signal is visible in the Association Agreement concluded between the European Union and the Southern Common Market, MERCOSUR, comprising Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. After extended negotiation, both sides chose to formalize a framework rather than prolong uncertainty. Its significance lies not only in tariff schedules but in demonstrating that negotiated arrangements remain attainable even in a more contested environment.
For developing economies, such outcomes are consequential. Trade is closely linked to diversification and value addition. That process depends on consistent rules and credible expectations. When policy becomes discretionary or case-specific, complexity multiplies. Compliance costs rise, uncertainty deepens and policy space narrows. Larger economies may manage such volatility. More vulnerable ones face sharper constraints.
In March, members of the World Trade Organization will meet with a mandate to update and reform elements of the trade rulebook. Reform requires more than defending existing frameworks. It requires the willingness to update them when they no longer reflect economic realities. The system must reflect contemporary supply chains, digital exchange and evolving production patterns. Timing also matters. If the rulebook does not evolve alongside economic realities, markets will adapt around it and restoring coherence will become more difficult.
Supply chains are adjusting rather than disappearing. Fragmentation remains a risk, not a foregone conclusion. Outcomes will depend on whether interdependence is managed through credible frameworks or through accumulating unilateral measures.
Predictability is not about preserving past arrangements, but about providing clarity for investment, diversification and long-term planning. When confidence weakens, the effects rarely remain confined to markets.
Trade policy may appear technical. In practice, it influences development trajectories and social cohesion. Clear and consistently applied rules give countries, particularly those still building productive capacity, space to expand opportunity and strengthen resilience. But the rules requiere to have the capacity to evolve with economic realities and deliver tangible results.
The direction of the global trading system is not predetermined. Governments retain the capacity to reinforce negotiated rules and to update them when circumstances require adjustment.
Preserving credibility does not mean resisting change. It means ensuring that reform strengthens coordination and restores confidence.
Trade offers a clear illustration of a broader reality. In an interconnected world, stability depends on agreements that are credible, adaptable and consistently applied.
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