After Globalisation: What the Next Trade Order Looks Like From Riyadh

The post-war trading order that liberalised global commerce, bound nations through supply chains, and made the WTO the arbiter of disputes is not merely under stress. It is over.

What replaces it will be determined not in Geneva or Brussels, but in the capitals that have spent the past decade positioning themselves as indispensable nodes in whatever architecture comes next. Among those capitals, Riyadh occupies a singular position.

The End of the Washington Consensus on Trade

Three forces have converged to dissolve the old order. First, the United States — the order's architect and guarantor — has concluded that open trade no longer serves its domestic political economy. This conclusion transcends administrations and is now structurally embedded in American politics across party lines.

Second, China's integration into the global trading system produced outcomes that the order's architects did not anticipate: not gradual liberalisation, but the emergence of a state-capitalist competitor operating by different rules within a system designed for market economies.

Third, and most consequentially, the pandemic and the war in Ukraine demonstrated that the efficiency gains of deep globalisation came with fragility costs that no risk model had adequately priced.

Saudi Arabia's Structural Position

Against this backdrop, Saudi Arabia's position is extraordinary. It sits at the intersection of three of the world's major trade flows: energy, food, and logistics. Vision 2030 has, whatever its critics say about execution, successfully begun diversifying the kingdom's role from commodity exporter to economic hub.

Dr. Tariq Salim is Distinguished Fellow for Trade and Geopolitics at Imprint.