Trust, Not Tariffs: The Real Currency of Global Trade

Trust is mission-critical for global trade, especially as digitalization accelerates. In this article, we explore how trade is evolving from paper to PDFs to protocols, and why trust remains the foundation of digital success.

Global trade today is dominated by headlines about tariffs, trade wars and protectionist policies. US President Trump’s tariffs may usher in a new chapter of disruption, but the long-term success of global trade lies in something far less tangible, and that’s trust.

As trade digitalization accelerates, the ability to securely exchange goods, services and information across borders will come down to how effectively countries and corporates can build trust. Whether its blockchain technology or digital identities, the future of trade will be created on innovative solutions that ensure transparency, reliability and seamless collaboration among global partners.

That journey started about five years ago when the International Chamber of Commerce’s Banking Commission came together to articulate the core challenges impeding global trade digitalization. Oswald Kuyler, Senior Digital Trade Advisor to the Asian Development Bank and Digital Standards Adviser to the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) was part of those efforts.

From those efforts, ICC’s Digital Standards Initiative (DSI) was formed —spearheading a clear strategy that centered on standards, legislative reform, digital identity and trust protocols emerged.

“The good news is the strategy hasn’t changed, which is something we should celebrate because a lot of the time, we see the strategy change every single year to go with a new set of problems. This speaks to how well we’ve understood the problem,” said Kulyer on the Trade and Treasury Now (TTN) podcast.

He highlights the traction that is taking place with the Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records (MLETR), and countries like Bahrain have adopted it, with France and the UK following suit. In addition, GSBN, IQAX, WiseTech Global and others have demonstrated that “interoperability can be achieved when using standards”.

According to Kulyer, “we’re closer to the end of the journey than the beginning”.

The trust factor

One of the main barriers to scaling digital trade is the absence of a universal standard. However, Kulyer notes that “the whole planet isn’t going to agree to one standard” as different regions favor different approaches.  Projects like the DSI are working to create a framework that allows different systems to communicate effectively.

This is where trust becomes critical. As Kulyer reflected on the past five years of the ICC’s experimentation on trade digitalization, he concluded that multiple models would coexist, but the industry’s North Star should be to harmonize them and ensure they can support scalable trade processes without forcing businesses to adopt 35 different platforms for 35 different documents.

Trust, in this context, is the cornerstone of digital trade. However, in today’s AI-powered world where fake documents are everywhere, maintaining that trust is becoming increasingly difficult.

“Paper comes with stamps and signatures that naturally build trust,” Stephan Wolf, Chair of the Board of Verifiable.Trade Foundation (VTF) explained on the TTN podcast. “But once we move from paper and into computer-to-computer transactions, we lose that. Suddenly, it’s all about data and where that comes from, who authorized it, and whether it’s been tampered with.”

This is the essence of digital identities, which enables machines, and ultimately, humans to trust digital data without needing manual checks or assumptions. “Trading partners don’t need to necessarily trust each other, they just need to trust that the data they’re receiving is authentic and untampered,” added Wolf.

VTF is looking to extend this concept which Wolf describes as “digital data containers” —structured, sealed packages of trade data that can be verified by anyone, anywhere.

From paper to protocols

Wolf draws parallels to the early days of the internet, where people found a website too expensive until standards like HTTP democratized access. The vision inspired the conceptualized of VTF, as a not-for-profit foundation championing open, copyright-free and fee-free standards.

“We’re not building a product. We’re creating a foundation that invites the industry to co-create a standard and build tools around it,” Wolf explained.

The goal? To offer an open-source toolkit that is simple, accessible and compatible with everyday software. Imagine clicking "Save As" in Word or Excel and having a legally compliant, machine-readable trade document ready to go.

VTF plans to finalize its proposal in the coming months, followed by the publication of specifications and architectural guidelines by year’s end. Software development is set to begin in 2026, though Wolf remains optimistic: “Thanks to AI and co-generation tools, the hardest part isn’t programming—it’s getting the conceptual model right and securing industry-wide acceptance.”

A new era of trade

As international trade steadily shifts from paper and PDFs and soon, to protocols, the digital transformation is well underway. The true challenge isn’t in coding but in achieving consensus: designing digital solutions that are universally accepted and simple as paper-based ones.

Trust is the invisible infrastructure of trade, and establishing digital trust is essential as we move toward a fully digital future. According to Kulyer, various models for digital trust have been tested through the years, ranging from public to permissioned and permissionless systems.

While much has been debated globally about the merits of these different approaches, the central question remains: what real-world problems do they solve? As Kulyer and Wolf emphasize, the goal is a seamless digital ecosystem — one where verifying a trade document is as effortless as opening a browser or sending an email.