Products You May Like
The QI Group executive chairman argues that trade fragmentation is reshaping, not ending, the global economy, and that regions like ASEAN are at the center of the redesign.
World trade hit a record $33 trillion in 2024, up 3.7% from the year before. That figure — drawn from UN Trade and Development data — might surprise anyone who has spent the past few years reading headlines about deglobalization, fractured supply chains and an era of every-nation-for-itself trade policy.
For Vijay Eswaran, executive chairman of the QI Group and a longtime commentator on global economic trends, the surprise is misplaced. Globalization has not collapsed. It is being redesigned.
“Rather than portending the end of globalization, these pressures signal its redesign more than its end,” Eswaran writes in a new analysis published through the World Economic Forum.
From Efficiency to Resilience
The model that dominated global commerce for decades was built on one core assumption: efficiency above all else. Goods traveled wherever they could be made cheapest. Capital moved at the speed of a wire transfer. The logic was clean, and for a long time it worked.
Then came a sequence of shocks: a pandemic, escalating tariff conflicts, climate-driven logistics failures and the kind of geopolitical turbulence that turns shipping corridors into liability. Container costs climbed 40% year-on-year in 2025 alone, and tariff increases reshuffled more than $400 billion in global trade flows.
The model built for stability could not hold. Eswaran argues that what is emerging in its place is not a retreat from global commerce but an upgrade. “While the old model of globalization was built to maximize efficiency, the emerging one must be built to maximize resilience,” he writes.
Nearly three in four business leaders now count resilience investments as a growth driver, according to a recent World Economic Forum report, a figure that would have been unthinkable in an era when just-in-time everything was the gold standard.
Why Vijay Eswaran Sees Regions as Bridges, Not Barriers
Central to Eswaran’s argument is the role of regional trade blocs, not as defensive walls against globalization, but as the architecture that makes deeper integration more durable.
The World Trade Organization listed 381 regional trade agreements in force as of March 2026. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership spans 15 countries, covering roughly 30% of global GDP and a third of the world’s population. ASEAN’s proposed Digital Economy Framework Agreement aims to harmonize rules across data flows, e-commerce, cybersecurity and digital payments.
“Regions create the conditions under which trade, talent, capital and innovation can continue to move with greater confidence,” Eswaran writes. He adds that the ASEAN secretary-general has estimated the bloc’s digital economy could reach $2 trillion by 2030.
The data on diversification points in the same direction. Research from UNCTAD shows firms are moving away from narrow nearshoring strategies and distributing trade flows across multiple regions to build flexibility. Regionalization, on this reading, is a risk-distribution mechanism, not an isolationist posture.
Intelligence, Interoperability and the Trust Factor
Eswaran also addresses the role AI and digital infrastructure will play in the next phase of global commerce. Supply chains that once operated as static, linear systems are giving way to adaptive networks that can anticipate disruptions, reroute logistics in real time and reduce waste.
OECD analysis suggests that a 10% improvement in border automation and cooperation among customs agencies could raise global goods exports by up to 18%. BIS-led Project Nexus, meanwhile, is developing infrastructure to connect domestic instant payment systems internationally, enabling cross-border settlement in most cases within 60 seconds.
None of it works, Eswaran argues, without trust. “In an uncertain world, trust is part of the economic system. Dialogue is a practical tool for solving problems,” he writes. Leaders who can build confidence across geopolitical divides will be as valuable to the global economy as those who optimize logistics algorithms.
On the question of reshoring, the idea that economies should simply bring production home, Eswaran is skeptical. OECD modeling suggests large-scale relocalization could reduce global trade by more than 18% and cut global GDP by over 5%, without delivering meaningful gains in resilience.
Diversification, he argues, is the answer. Not decoupling.
“The next phase of globalization will not be built only by markets or machines but by leaders and institutions willing to create systems that are resilient, cooperative and humane,” Eswaran concludes. The record trade figures of 2024 suggest the process is already underway.