Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1540425
10 PCB007 MAGAZINE I OCTOBER 2025 F E AT U R E A RT I C L E by C h r i s M i tc h e l l , G l o b a l E l e ct ro n i c s As s o c i a t i o n A New Era for Global Trade and Electronics T he global trade system is undergoing an enor- mous, systemic paradigm shift. For decades, the World Trade Organization (WTO), with the sup- port of the United States, its traditional European allies, and many other nations, stood at the cen- ter of efforts to create fairer, more predictable, and rules-based commerce. Today, however, that model is giving way to a more fragmented reality—so far U.S.-driven—in which individual nations and blocs are striking deals and imposing a variety of rules of their own liking. President Trump launched this trend as far back as 2017 by questioning the value of multilateral institutions and placing greater emphasis on bilat- eral agreements. This was generally true during his first term, with the signature example in trade being the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement that he pro- posed and secured. The second Trump administration has pursued this approach with even greater zeal, ignoring the WTO and existing trade agreements and instead impos- ing new U.S. tariff regimes on a country-by-country, region-by-region, and sector-by-sector basis. The result is that the WTO is no longer the anchor of global trade, and companies must navigate a com- plicated patchwork of overlapping rules, tariffs, and compliance requirements, and all of them are in flux. For the electronics industry, which has the most globally integrated supply chains of any industry, this is a consequential development. A circuit board designed in California may involve laminates from Tai- wan, copper from Chile, semiconductors from South Korea, and assembly operations in Mexico, before being shipped to a U.S. manufacturer that puts the boards and other components into final products and exports them to happy consumers worldwide.