Amid the ongoing global trade and tariff warfare, further complicated by the Iran war, a seminar called the “New Global Trade Landscape under Tariff Wars” was held during the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2026 recently. Panellists called on countries to uphold multilateralism, apart from ensuring the continuance of rules-based free trade.
Stating that trade frictions cannot be resolved by raising protectionist barriers, Giovanni Tria, Italy’s former minister of economy and finance, told the Global Times, “Tariff tensions are having a big impact on the global economy.” He stressed that countries need to practice globalisation, which is the basis for development around the world.
Former Italian prime minister Paolo Gentiloni, while stating that globalisation will continue, remarked during the seminar, “the risk is that global trade in the future will not be based on rules, but on force and coalition,” stressing that the European Union (EU) is “very concerned” about such a shift.
He further added that raising protectionist barriers is not the solution to trade frictions. He called for efforts “to keep rules-based trade, free trade, going,” and requested countries to “invest in WTO reform… and give credit to the WTO.”
Former US Secretary of Commerce Carlos M. Gutierrez, who was part of the panel, added that the economic cost of protectionism is also becoming more evident. He told the Global Times, “Tariffs are not a way to manage the global economy permanently.”
He further noted that despite ongoing frictions between Washington and Beijing, room remains for economic cooperation between the world’s two largest economies.
Li Cheng, a professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong, said that the current wave of tariff and trade tensions should be seen as part of a broader and widely shared trend in the West, especially in the United States. He also said that protectionist sentiment and scepticism toward globalisation have been growing across political and economic circles right now, reflecting deeper structural issues in the US, when it comes to domestic distribution challenges and shifts in the global economic landscape.
Cheng doesn’t see trade conflicts disappearing in the near term, and Washington’s current protectionist approach should be seen as a result of weakness, confusion and fear. Stressing that these trends indicate a fundamental transformation in the global trade and economic landscape, he called for greater emphasis on multilateralism, international cooperation and respect for global institutions such as the WTO.
Wong Kan Seng, former deputy prime minister of Singapore, said that rising trade tensions, supply chain reconfigurations and increasing government interventions (subsidies and investment screening) are driving up costs and fragmenting global trade in the process. Such shifts will only make things like duplicated supply chains, higher trading costs and conflicting regulatory regimes the new normal, thereby placing greater pressure on smaller and emerging economies.
However, according to Robert Koopman, former chief economist of the World Trade Organisation and Hurst Senior Professorial Lecturer at American University, China has shown strong resilience and adaptability amid the ongoing global trade warfare and has started diversifying its portfolio.