Taking stock: Global trade's new reality

**Will Bain** (0:03)
Hello, I'm Will Bain, and welcome to Business Daily. In the week that, sorry, seemed to be the hardest word for the boss of world football's governing body, FIFA, Gianni Infantino, did manage to stretch to admitting errors had been made in his pursuit for private investment in world football, but his future still looks pretty rocky. No schisms for us, though. We're still standing, ready to crocodile rock, perhaps. No more mangling about and John puns. It's time to take stock of the Business Week panel, as always, here on the programme. Jennifer Pak, a China correspondent for NPR, is joining us from Beijing. And Trevor Simumba, international development expert, is joining us from the Zambian capital, Lusaka. Hello, both. I'd review an Elton John fan.

**Trevor Simumba** (0:44)
Oh. The dad who was an Elton John fan. My dad was an Elton John fan.

**Will Bain** (0:49)
Gianni Infantino fan? Nope.
Trevor is the football fan, can speak for all of us there. Yeah. That's the last, I think, we'll talk about the boss of world football on the program today, but we've got absolutely loads to get to from trade to the future of booze consumption around the world. So let's get right into it then. This is Taking Stock from Business Daily on the BBC World Service.
Yeah. Shall we start talking trade, guys? Because earlier this week, the body which regulates global imports and exports, the World Trade Organisation published quite an interesting report, which found that in their words, global trade policy intervention reached an all time high in early 2026 as governments increasingly turned protectionist measures and state aid. In English, Jennifer, countries put up more tariffs, stepped in more than ever before to prop up sectors and sometimes, I guess, companies as well. I guess no surprise given the sort of tariff blitz we saw at the start of the year. WTO is flagging this. But it does seem interesting, doesn't it, that it's sort of beyond Donald Trump and his tariff, what's going on at the moment?

**Jennifer Pak** (1:49)
Well, absolutely. But it's also slightly related because the reason that President Trump had raised these tariffs was because they were complaining that China was overproducing and then dumping these products both in the US and also in overseas markets at below market prices. That has always been the longstanding accusation about Chinese manufacturers, something that China does not accept and says, in fact, there aren't enough, especially for the green sector, not enough of their products out there.

**Trevor Simumba** (2:18)
Absolutely. In fact, I think Jennifer is being too kind.
All this is coming as a result of Trump's tariffs, because the way Trump imposed the tariffs was outside the WTO. We have a very clear process in the WTO. America is a member, China is a member, and this should have been done within the trade rules. Inevitably, what has happened is that countries like China, Canada, European Union, member states, even Africa has imposed tariffs as well to try and hit back at what Donald Trump has done. He's really created a terrible situation in global trade. However, because of the economic drive, particularly driven by the critical minerals, you still see global trade moving forward and is still dominating, but increasingly America is no longer part of that discussion. It's now about South to South cooperation between Asia and Africa, between Europe and Africa.

**Jennifer Pak** (3:20)
I will just add though that the tariffs that are being imposed is not just in retaliation to the US. Trevor is right about that, but it's also because Chinese manufacturers are not selling to the US, they have to redirect their products. And China has been openly saying, well, we have other markets, so they've been going to Southeast Asia, which has increased by a lot. And even traditional allies of China, who count to China as their biggest trade partner, are stunned at the amount of stuff that's coming in, because the US had been absorbing so much and also very high profit margin items. And so now it's going into Europe, it's going into Africa, it's going to Latin America. And a lot of these countries are worried about their own small and medium sized businesses. So count Thailand, you have Mexico, even Russia has imposed some tariffs on Chinese exports.

**Will Bain** (4:12)
Trevor, you work right across Africa. Are you seeing that in anywhere in particular?

**Trevor Simumba** (4:15)
Yes, it's happening a lot. A lot of domestic manufacturers are complaining about the unfair competition that is coming in from China. Jennifer is absolutely right. We've seen an increase in the amount of goods that are coming in. And so a lot of governments, what they're doing now, in particular in Southern Africa, led by Zambia, Tanzania, Ethiopia, is to say to the Chinese, okay, some of these things that you are sending to us, manufactured in China, we begin to manufacture them in our countries. And so special economic zones are being established where Chinese manufacturers are actually setting up. And we're seeing also in the energy sector, a lot of Chinese investment.