After nearly a year of significant disruption, lasting changes to the trade and economic landscape are coming into focus. Governments around the world are taking tentative steps to adjust, including launching new initiatives like the Future of Investment and Trade Partnership (FIT-P) and repurposing existing arrangements, especially building on the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). While these efforts are to be applauded, progress remains painfully slow even as the stakes grow swiftly higher.

President Donald Trump’s radical agenda has created chaos with tariff adjustments, new and changing demands especially for America’s trade partners and allies, and a dramatic weakening of global institutions.

The early reactions to the range of policies emanating out of Washington were largely shock and surprise by companies and governments alike. Firms froze investment decisions and waited for greater clarity. Governments scrambled to decide how to engage with Trump’s team and analyse the likely extent of domestic economic damage.

Trump remains mercurial, with likely future tariff demands and rapid adjustments in proposed and implemented tariff policies as well as growing insistence on expanding changes in policies to areas like digital trade or export controls.

The speed of change promoted by the US administration has created specific challenges for government policymakers who are unused to managing high levels of disruption at a blistering pace. Many governments require complex domestic negotiations and careful consideration of options before any new policies can be adopted. This mismatch in the pace of decision-making globally has hampered quick collective responses to Trump’s trade disruptions.

Nonetheless, the initial paralysis in decision-making outside the US is slowly giving way to greater recognition of new challenges and opportunities. Many of the options under consideration are entirely new while others are adjustments or repurposing existing networks, partnerships, and structures.

At the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders’ summit meetings in late October 2025, it was possible to spot some early reactions to the new economic climate.

After the two summits, trade ministers gathered in Singapore on 18 November to formally launch a new economic initiative called FIT-P. The genesis of FIT-P predates the return of Donald Trump to the White House. It was originally conceived by officials in Singapore, New Zealand, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Switzerland as a reaction to ongoing paralysis in the global trade regime.

As small states, all four governments were keenly aware that the ongoing inability of the multilateral trading system to support trade openness and further develop rules and norms for evolving trade patterns put their future economic growth at risk. Countries built on the power of trade to deliver economic growth and development will not thrive in an increasingly uncertain and protectionist world.

The original intention was to provide a new mechanism for like-minded governments to bolster the trade agenda at the World Trade Organization (WTO) through a potential range of projects and dialogues. However, ongoing global trade disruption led to much greater interest by other similarly situated governments than originally anticipated. By the time of launch in Singapore, FIT-P had already grown to include 16 members (Brunei, Chile, Costa Rica, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Malaysia, Morocco, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Rwanda, Singapore, Switzerland, UAE, and Uruguay) with another six observers.*

As it is early days in FIT-P, it is not yet clear exactly how this grouping will proceed. It will support WTO outcomes, although the level of global trade disruption means that new items could be added to the agenda. It makes sense for members to consider a mix of concrete, practical projects that could deliver tangible economic benefits on relatively rapid timelines. FIT-P officials are considering using “pathfinder initiatives”—a way for smaller groups of interested economies within the same grouping to move forward together on an issue first with the goal of adding members or the entire grouping should the “pathfinder” get traction—to demonstrate results among all or subsets of members. The institutional structure is meant to be flexible and allow testing of new ideas and initiatives.

Concrete projects will likely be supported by dialogues between members about specific issues. For example, digital trade facilitation is an early area of coverage. FIT-P economies are deeply engaged in digital trade, including expertise in tech manufacturing and delivery of digital services, yet they do not set global standards, rules, or even norms of behaviour for the development of digital trade and technologies. Members do have a common interest, however, in sharing their experiences in crafting responses to policies being developed in larger economies with the goal of leveraging opportunities and minimizing risks from future developments.

It will be important to recall, however, that FIT-P members are small. As such, they are all resource-constrained, including having modestly sized government staffing. They will have to be carefully focused in FIT-P on a handful of critical topics and projects.

Another existing trade platform is being slowly repurposed and adjusted to better tackle the challenges of a fragmenting global system. The 12 existing members of CPTPP engaged in two days of activities on 20-21 November.**

CPTPP members issued two important statements with the European Union and with ASEAN. Together, the 46 governments involved promised to respond collectively to ongoing trade and economic disruption, with commitments split into three key areas.

First, members recognized the importance of trade and economic integration. These statements may seem banal, but they are especially important signals in a time of growing disruption and potential fragmentation. Members also called out market-distorting practices, a growing use of economic coercion, and emphasized the importance of digital trade and data flows.

Second, members offered robust support for the WTO as the core of the multilateral trading system with strong endorsement of plurilateral initiatives including a defense of electronic commerce and a commitment to maintaining a global moratorium on customs duties for electronic transmissions, which is set to expire as a WTO rule by 31 March next year unless overturned by the multilateral trade institution’s next ministerial conference scheduled for 26-29 March 2026.

Third, members included specific action items for future collaboration, including work on trade and investment facilitation, digital trade, and supply chain resilience. The CPTPP and ASEAN added regulatory coherence, while the EU statement with the CPTPP added trade diversification and explicitly agreed on supporting the multilateral rules-based system.

The CPTPP Commission, led by each member’s trade ministers or representatives, also met separately. In the continuing absence of a Secretariat, the organization is managed by rotating Chairs. The CPTPP Commission in 2025 was hosted by Australia. This year’s Chair will be Vietnam, with the Chair order determined by the timing of the member’s entry into the agreement.

While CPTPP members were quite ambitious in their dialogues with the EU and ASEAN, the same cannot be said for their internal deliberations. There were three key issues to be discussed in Melbourne, including a deeper look at the institutional structure with issues such as management of the grouping and its decision-making rules, options for how to manage with a long applicant queue, and operationalizing the insights of a multi-year review process. The outcomes achieved at these groupings, and to a similar extent FIT-P, are important because none of them at this point include the US or China, and would be an indicator of whether the “rest of the world” can function effectively without leadership by either or both of the world’s largest economies.

The underlying TPP was originally concluded in 2015 when the United States was still a participating member. The institutional organization issues seemed less compelling at that time, because it was clear that the US would provide strong leadership. Members had joined the trade arrangement because they wanted to be ambitious and were committed to similar outcomes. Agreement by consensus in a small, like-minded grouping seemed sensible.

But the departure of the US, the reconfiguration of the TPP into the CPTPP, the addition of new members like the United Kingdom, and a vastly altered economic landscape make the weak institutional structure and limited rules in the CPTPP’s legal agreement on key points like accessions increasingly problematic.

In spite of clear challenges in managing the grouping, the best CPTPP members could manage last year was a promise to create a “Unit.” While the creation of a Secretariat alone will not address all institutional challenges, one look at the activities promised for 2026 suggests the importance of a standing administrative office for the grouping, since even ensuring that paperwork is effectively shared will be difficult and demanding.

Members had planned to announce the inclusion of Costa Rica by the Commission meeting. This was shifted to reporting on progress in negotiations by December. Only Uruguay has obtained the green light to start accessions, with the UAE, the Philippines, and Indonesia falling into a “perhaps” category for 2026. Starting negotiations, the final Commission statement says, is not a guarantee of entry and requires future and current members to maintain high standards.

Members finally concluded their “Year 3” review, a mandatory cycle to assess the CPTPP agreement’s operations and effectiveness, of the agreement. They have decided that most of the agreement should be negotiated again. The list of chapters not included in new talks is much shorter than the list of elements to be reconsidered.*** It is not clear how much change in each area might be on the table for consideration, but the Commission statement includes a very wide remit. Given that it took three years of work just to complete the review of the agreement, negotiating new chapter commitments will not be fast.

The Unit, which will not be ready for another year, will not be in a position to manage accessions or the renegotiation of most of the agreement. Thus, CPTPP members will have to remain vigilant to accomplish all they have indicated must be achieved within a year.

If this was not enough of a sprawling agenda, CPTPP also suggested adding more of a focus on trade for women, indigenous peoples, micro, small, and medium sized enterprises (MSMEs), environment and climate change, and sustainable agriculture and food systems.

Hence, members have promised an ambitious agenda, to be delivered while simultaneously managing complex accession procedures and working more collaboratively with the CPTPP’s new partners in the EU and ASEAN on broader issues of increasing concern.

The fact that members have been able to identify a wide array of challenges to be tackled in different settings is important. But the limited work done in 2025 in coordinating and delivering on nearly any aspect of a large and growing agenda highlights the gaps between rhetoric and the increasing difficulties of managing trade and economic issues in a chaotic landscape.

Business as usual, even if dressed up in a series of important pledges, is unlikely to be able to deliver change fast enough. Governments have had multiple opportunities to set up institutions and commitments better suited to the challenges of the future. Judging by events last year, the sense of urgency is still too muted. If the past months of dealing with chaos were insufficient to persuade governments to think differently, it is hard to imagine what else it might take to move quicker.

* FIT-P observers currently include Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Peru, Philippines. and Thailand.

** The existing members of the CPTPP are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Vietnam.

*** Specific areas called up for updating and enhancement through negotiations included: Electronic Commerce, Trade in Services, Customs Administration and Trade Facilitation, Competitiveness and Business Facilitation, and Trade and Women's Economic Empowerment. Members were also asked to update provisions on: Investment, State-Owned Enterprises, Innovation, Gender Mainstreaming, Economic Coercion, and Market Distorting Practices.

An earlier version of this article was first published by the Hinrich Foundation.

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Deborah Elms is Head of Trade Policy, Hinrich Foundation.

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Synergies by TESS is an online platform dedicated to promoting inclusive policy dialogue at the intersection of trade, environment, and sustainable development, drawing on perspectives from a range of experts from around the globe. The editor is Fabrice Lehmann.

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