What this theme tracks
Multilateral WTO-rule-making has effectively stalled since the 2017 Appellate Body crisis. In its place, a wave of bilateral, regional and plurilateral instruments is being negotiated 2025-26, each designed to either (i) lock in preferential market access between aligned blocs, or (ii) secure supply-chain coverage for critical inputs (minerals, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals).
The instruments included here share three structural features:
- partner-by-partner architecture (not WTO-style most-favoured-nation),
- explicit supply-chain or strategic-resource framing,
- coexistence with the broader post-2024 US tariff-reset regime — they
are the constructive counterpart to the destructive (tariff) side of the same realignment.
Boundary with adjacent themes
- Post-2024 US trade reset — the tariff-led, emergency-authority
side of the same realignment. Bilateral CRM frameworks that were responses to the US reset (e.g. US-Japan critical-minerals framework) appear in both themes.
- Western industrial-policy stack — the subsidy/credit-led side
(CHIPS, IRA, EU Chips Act, JASM). Bilateral trade agreements that enable cross-border industrial investment but are not themselves subsidy instruments belong here, not there.
- EM resource upstream capture — Mercosur-side industrial-policy
instruments (Argentina RIGI, Brazil NIB) belong in that theme; the EU-Mercosur agreement that opens the EU market to those Mercosur flows belongs here.