WITA’s Friday Exchange: Leader-to-Leader Vibes, Tariffs, and the Courts: Trade Tensions Recalibrated
A major court ruling on Section 122 tariffs is shaking up the trade landscape and raising new questions about how far presidential tariff authority can go. Our trade experts break down the narrow but consequential decision, the legal battle over “balance of payments” language, and the long-term prospects for the President tariffs after court rulings invalidating tariffs imposed under IEEPA and Section 122.
The panel also dives into Brazilian President Lula’s “dynamic” meeting with President Trump; President Trump’s call with EC President von der Leyen; the high-level summit coming up between President Trump and President Xi, and the geopolitical balancing act facing Lula, Trump, Xi, and Europe as global trade tensions continue to simmer. The conversation then turns to what comes next: tighter legal discipline around Section 301 investigations, growing concern over litigation risks, and how the administration may rethink tariff narratives moving forward.
Featured Speakers:
Kellie Meiman Hock, Senior Counselor, McLarty Associates; Adjunct Professor, Georgetown University; Board Member, Inter-American Dialogue; former Director of Brazil and the Southern Cone, Office of the United States Trade Representative
Daniel Mullaney, Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council; former Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Europe and the Middle East
Kelly Ann Shaw, Partner, Akin; former Deputy Assistant to the President for International Economic Affairs & Deputy Director, National Economic Council
Mike Smart, Managing Director, Rock Creek Global Advisors; former Director for International Trade and Investment, National Security Council, The White House; former Trade Counsel, Democratic Staff, U.S. Senate Committee on Finance
Watch the Video on YouTube | Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
Recorded at 9:15 AM US/ET on 05/08/2026 | WITA
Strategic Techno-Economic Agreements: Trade Deals In a Geopolitically Convoluted Era
Introduction
The rise of China changed the trajectory of US-led globalization, and now the global trade system is drifting into the unknown.
Trade is not neutral. It has always reflected national interests, and what comes next in the global trade architecture should reflect the geopolitical moment. The post-Second World War globalization first took shape among Western-bloc countries during the Cold War and sharply accelerated after the fall of the Soviet regime. Those two phases were, to a great extent, models tailored for geopolitical purposes — first to compete with the Soviet Union, later to reflect the United States’ “unipolar moment.” The rise of China changed this trajectory, and now the global trade system is drifting into the unknown. This article proposes and explains a feasible way of thinking about trade deals during the 21st-century Great Power competition: incorporating the notion of strategic techno-economic agreements.
Trade and Geopolitics Go Hand in Hand
No country alone can counterweigh a juggernaut like China, with its tremendous market size and manufacturing capacity.
The US-China strategic competition is quintessentially a race for techno-economic dominance. This is substantially different than the Cold War period. The Soviet Union was a geopolitical and military rival of Western democracies. Still, it was not a significant market, a supplier of intermediate goods, or a serious competitor in trade and foreign direct investment. This is in part because the Soviet bloc largely closed itself off from postwar US-led globalization and chose to run its economy on hardline principles that proved ultimately its undoing. China is challenging the United States and allies across all these fronts.
To be sure, the United States is not fully equipped to compete with China. No country alone can counterweigh a juggernaut with its tremendous market size and manufacturing capacity. Democracies should seek to build an economic bloc to do so, as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) was initially intended. The risk of not doing so is deepening de-industrialization and dependencies on China as the “world’s factory.”
05/05/2026 | Stephen Ezell & Rodrigo Balbontin | The Hinrich Foundation
India’s West Asian Dilemma
Dr. Aparna Pande is a featured speaker at WITA’s Virtual Intensive Trade Seminar, May 19, 20, 21. For information and to register, please click here.
The war in Iran is affecting India beyond the global oil shock and trade disruptions. New Delhi has long viewed the Middle East as part of its extended neighborhood and maintains ties with all key actors in the conflict – Iran, the United States, Israel and the Arab Gulf states. As in the Cold War era, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration now faces the classic strategic challenge of balancing relations with contending parties without aligning with any one of them.
Economic consequences of the Iran war
New Delhi’s margin for maneuver has narrowed since U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran triggered Iranian retaliation against Gulf states. This region is crucial for India, providing about 45 percent of its crude oil and condensate, 66 percent of its liquefied natural gas (LNG) and 90 percent of its liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) imports. Over 9 million Indians reside in the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, contributing nearly 40 percent of India’s annual remittances, which total around $135 billion.
In addition to direct supply disruptions, volatility in the global energy market has increased uncertainty about India’s import costs, putting pressure on subsidies and government spending. Energy shortages are affecting all sections of society, including average households, fueling inflationary pressures and limiting spending. A shortage of LPG cylinders has led to the closure of small commercial establishments.
Industries such as automobiles, electronics, ceramics, fertilizers and pharmaceuticals are suffering due to the fuel crunch. Supply chains in the Indian Ocean region have slowed considerably. With India’s main agricultural season set to begin in June, the prolonged conflict – which has led to a fertilizer shortage – poses a serious threat to the country’s food supply.
05/05/2026 | Dr. Aparna Pande | Geopolitical Intelligence Services
Moments of Bifurcation: From Gibraltar to Hormuz
Boaventura de Sousa Santos is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the School of Economics, University of Coimbra (Portugal), and Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School.
In the scientific field, the term “bifurcation” was first used by Henri Poincaré, but in the second half of the 20th century, the concept and theory of bifurcation came to be associated with the chemist and Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine. Prigogine’s theory of bifurcation is based on the following ideas: the fundamental indeterminacy of reality and the consequent insistence on not considering chance, chaos, and disorder as pure negativity outside the scientific realm; complex systems create forms of self-organization that produce unpredictable changes and transitions (dissipative structures); in situations out of equilibrium (entropy, second law of thermodynamics), disorder prevails over order, and systems can enter moments of bifurcation in which small changes can produce enormous and unpredictable consequences.
Initially formulated in chemistry, the theory of bifurcation has sparked interest in philosophy, art, sociology, etc. The sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein was one of those most drawn to Prigogine’s theory and who explored it most deeply in the field of sociology. According to him, the modern world system has been accumulating contradictions; its development since the 16th century is based on certain long-term premises and trends that, one by one, have disappeared or been called into question. The world system is currently facing a structural crisis that constitutes a bifurcation point, a period of chaotic transition marked by great political and economic volatility.
According to Wallerstein, this transition could last until 2050, and what follows could be something more authoritarian and hierarchical or more democratic and egalitarian. I am convinced that history has accelerated in recent times and that new factors of unpredictability have emerged, above all three: the imminent ecological collapse, the development of artificial intelligence, and the emergence of an extremist Judeo-Christian Zionism. Unpredictability is greater than ever. Any decision involving calculated risk could result in incalculable risk. Is the world—conceived as the modern world system—entering a moment of bifurcation? Is the war in Iran the manifestation of that moment? If so, any action by any of the major players (Israel, the U.S., and Iran) or their allies, however calculated it may be, could have incalculable consequences:
A new world war (which for some has already begun)? A war that is more military than economic, or more economic than military? The end of the modern world system based on the vitality of modern capitalism and the hegemony of the West (successively: city-states of Italy, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, France, the United Kingdom, and the US)? A new period of rival hyper-nationalisms or religious wars between extremist movements (Jewish-Christian Zionist fundamentalism versus Islamic fundamentalism)? The acceleration of ecological collapse and the resulting massive displacement of populations (environmental refugees)? A new political conflict between the politics of life and the politics of death, replacing the modern conflict between left and right? The revolution of the sub-humans and sub-proletarians of the cyber-automated world, led by repentant insiders who know better than anyone the vulnerabilities of a power that presents itself as invulnerable.
05/06/2026 | Boaventura De Sousa Santos | Meer
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