2025 has been a year of shock for global supply chains and corporations navigating the impact of US tariffs. Yet, for Europe in particular, the long-term disruptions from tariffs have yet to be reflected in trade flow data, short-term export spikes appear to have levelled off, and China and the US remain key trading partners. 

 At the 2025 Sibos conference in Frankfurt, Germany, Trade Finance Global (TFG) sat down with Dirk Besdziek, Senior Trade Advisor, Institutional Clients Advisory and Analytics at Commerzbank AG, to discuss European trade flows within the shifting geopolitical landscape, industry resilience, and the future for emerging markets.

A changing order of globalisation

The multilateral order, based on global governance through institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the United Nations (UN), is being challenged as the US is increasingly withdrawing from this order, and is replacing its ‘free trade’ commitment with a tariff regime in 2025.

Increasingly, the formation of different trading blocks across the globe, is becoming visible.  “We’re probably at a point now where some of those changes are going to accelerate. Quite what they will look like, how significant they are, to what degree they lead to the formation of different trading blocks across the globe remains to be seen”, said Besdziek.

Yet, despite changing geopolitical alliances, many of Europe’s primary trade relationships with the US and China have remained stable. Imports from the US hit €31.2 billion in July 2025 compared to €26.6 billion in December 2024, while exports grew from €42.3 billion in December to €44.1 billion in July. However, they peaked at €71.7 billion in March 2024, likely as exporters looked to front-load shipments to avoid the impact of tariffs. 

“Europe’s trade flows have actually been evolving over a long period of time. For example, since 2000, the role of Russia as one of Europe’s trade partners had grown over time, and then, as a result of more recent events, has dropped off sharply. The United Kingdom has also declined as a trade partner to Europe over this period, while China grew into one of the EU’s most important partners alongside the United States. 

Building resilience through networks

A key topic at Sibos 2025 is how banks and corporations can manage geopolitical shocks to build resilience within global supply chains. Businesses have focused on controllable factors such as reducing reliance on single suppliers, increasing proximity to suppliers to mitigate risk, and looking towards digitisation and technology to improve efficiency and transaction security. 

As part of this strategy, Commerzbank is working with Swift on plans to add a blockchain-based ledger to its existing infrastructure to enable 24/7 cross-border payments. 

Besdziek said: “Being resilient means embracing the digital transformation in Trade – moving to paperless trade documentation, adopting AI to speed up processes and collaborating with third-party platform providers to improve the interface with clients. It means evaluating new risks quickly and effectively. It means being able to partner with clients in new markets and regions.  And it means for banks the ability to engage with regulators to help them best understand the challenges facing financial institutions

In March this year, Commerzbank accelerated its digital transformation by partnering with Google Cloud and Microsoft to integrate AI across all business areas and to increase cloud computing and data analytics, which banks can use to tackle fraudulent payments and predict market trends. 

A challenge for the industry in adopting new technologies, in particular digitisation, has been aligning client demand with the business case for investment in these new technologies. The take-up of new forms of digital documentation, such as electronic bills of lading (eBLs), remains at under 50%. 

“Banks support each other when it comes to trade transactions, when it comes to lending, in global markets, and in the payment flows associated with trades. The bank-to-bank relationships that are crafted at events such as SIBOS are an absolute foundation to the global order,” said Besdziek. 

Connecting emerging markets 

Emerging markets often face difficulties in breaking into the global supply chain system, which is one of the causes of the trade finance gap. 

In Vietnam, SMEs face high rejection rates, the primary reasons include insufficient collateral (28%), high credit risk of applicants (27%), according to the International Finance Corporation (IFC). In Indonesia, although micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) employ 97% of the workforce, only 4.2% of MSMEs are integrated into the global supply chain. South Asia is not alone in facing issues with access to supply-chain financing. 

Another issue for emerging markets is the increased regulation emerging from successive financial crises from 9/11 to COVID. This is likely to be compounded as tariff compliance controls become included in transactional due diligence as a result of the latest US tariffs. As transaction costs and complexity have risen, and the risks in emerging markets have increased, the trade finance gap will widen.

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“The real value” in having boots on the ground, Besdziek explained, “is around the many banking relationships that you build around a local presence node.” Local banks represent sellers, buyers, and public sector institutions, making them necessary partners when engaging in big infrastructure projects for example.

The next impact to watch out for will be that of the digital revolution on transaction due diligence. That is, as Besdziek explained, “the ability to predict and manage the end-to-end risk of a trade transaction, which will give everyone the confidence to execute that transaction. I think that’s where our journey is going.”