2025-26 bilateral and regional trade-realignment architecture

Wave of bilateral, plurilateral and inter-regional trade and critical-minerals frameworks negotiated or activated in 2025-26 — distinct from the post-2024 US trade reset (which is dominated by emergency-authority tariffs) and from the Western industrial-policy stack (which is subsidy-led). This theme captures the partner-by-partner trade-agreement architecture that is replacing WTO multilateralism: the EU-Mercosur Interim Trade Agreement (25-year negotiation finally concluded), the US-Argentina Reciprocal Trade and Investment Agreement (first standalone bilateral of the second Trump administration), the US-Japan and EU-US critical-minerals frameworks, and adjacent CRM/MOU instruments. Together these mark a structural shift toward preferential-access agreements designed to lock in supply-chain diversification.