The headlines speak of tit-for-tat tariffs, supply chain woes, faltering alliances, and a retreat from globalisation. We tend to frame trade wars in the language of crisis – conflict, disruption, escalation, retaliation. But from a foresight perspective, trade wars can also offer a window into what’s next. Beneath the turbulence, we may see signals of economic redesign: shifts from just-in-time efficiency to supply resilience, from liberal openness to sovereignty-driven autonomy, or from globalisation to value-aligned economic blocs. The question isn’t whether trade wars are good or bad, but what they can reveal about new systems that may be emerging.

Reframing trade wars – conflict as signal

Conflict – whether geopolitical, economic, social, or environmental – is traditionally framed as a problem to be solved or a crisis to be managed. But in the discipline of foresight, conflict can be reframed as a meaningful signal – offering clues of deeper systemic shifts, hidden tensions, or the potential birth of new structures. Rather than being interpreted as noise or anomalies, conflicts can be treated as rich inputs into scenario construction.

From a foresight perspective, trade wars can also be viewed differently – less like economic blunders, political weapons, or miscalculations and more like “messy field tests” for alternative global futures. Rather than despair, we can ask: What values are clashing? What systems are no longer working? What is struggling to emerge through this turbulence? What future systems are being stress-tested through these confrontations?

What can conflicts reveal to a foresight practioner?

• Many systemic conflicts, like trade wars, can reveal friction between old and emerging systems. For example, the US-China trade dispute may be less about tariffs and more about the end of an era where openness reigned over national sovereignty and strategic control.
• Conflicts can expose the fragility of assumed “normals” – like just-in-time supply chains and liberalised trade – highlighting potential design flaws we’ve normalised. For example, war-induced global fertiliser shortages have revealed the dependency risks in industrial agriculture, prompting questions about food sovereignty.
• Conflicts can act as accelerators of futures, catalysing innovation or adaptation. New alliances, business models, governance tools, and technologies often emerge under pressure. For example, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered massive European investment in clean energy, faster than years of climate negotiation had achieved.
• Conflicts can surface latent values and cultural shifts regarding justice, sovereignty, safety, sustainability etc. By mapping which values are being contested, foresight practitioners can anticipate where shifts in public mood and policy may be headed. For example, debates around AI regulation are not just technical – underlying are cultural conflicts about agency, transparency, and human dignity.
  

Trade wars – what futures are being prototyped?

Trade wars are not just about goods and tariffs; they are “high-intensity” signals of multiple larger forces at play. These signals point toward deeper reconfigurations in how economies will be built and governed. For example, the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) is not just an environmental policy – it could be viewed as a proto-framework for climate-aligned trade blocs, where more green tariffs, resource-based disputes, and carbon accountability will shape future alliances. Or the semiconductor battles between the US and China are an indication of emerging techno-nationalism, showing how deeply technology is now a terrain of national power. Sanctions on chip manufacturing, rare earth elements, and AI components indicate that digital infrastructure is no longer neutral – it’s a strategic asset.

Putting on our scenarist’s hat, we could interpret current trade tensions as early-stage models of competing futures, such as:

Future A: The great decoupling
A fragmented world of competing techno-blocs, with parallel internets (think of splinternet), supply chains, and currencies. Economic sovereignty becomes the organising principle.

Future B: The polycentric regenerative economy
Trade begins to reorganise around robust, regionally anchored systems that prioritise circular economies, ecological stewardship, and collaborative governance. What emerges is a post-global economy shaped more by place-based resilience than global efficiency.

Future C: The coordinated digital commonwealth
An intriguing vision of supranational cooperation via AI governance and blockchain-based compliance systems. Trade as a programmable, traceable, trustable mesh – no longer reliant on treaties alone.

Each scenario carries its own opportunities and maladies. Our role is not to pick one, but to explore the possibility space they illuminate.

Implications for foresight and strategy

What could all this mean for those of us working in futures thinking, strategic planning, or policy design? As foresight practitioners, we serve as interpreters of trade wars and other conflicts, extracting insights not just from what is happening, but from what it hints might come next. Specifically, we can

• Rethink baselines. What we often reference as “normal”, such as the relatively frictionless trade environment of 2015, may itself be an anomaly: a brief convergence of geopolitics, technology, and economic ideology. To use it as a benchmark is to mistake a moment for a model. The task isn’t to restore a past equilibrium, but to make sense of the transition and help shape what comes next.
• Mine the noise for signals. Trade wars and related disruptions can be read as weak signals of deeper design debates: Who controls data? What defines a critical resource? What supply chains are too critical to fail – and who decides? What is fair trade in a warming world? What new trade disputes might arise over water, carbon, food, or biodiversity?
• Stress-test strategies. Use conflict scenarios, like trade wars, to stress-test strategies or value chains under turbulent, divergent futures to uncover hidden vulnerabilities and potential redesign alternatives.
• Watch for wildcard catalysts. Unexpected developments– like an AI-generated trade agreement bypassing traditional diplomacy, a climate-triggered embargo on water-intensive exports, or a citizen-led boycott movement – could rapidly challenge assumptions. In foresight, staying attuned to such outliers is essential.
  

Reframing mindset – conflict not as breakdown, but as transition

The “conflict-as-signal” mindset challenges the reactive, linear thinking often found in our response to crises like trade wars. It invites leaders and strategists to:

• Stay curious during disruption
• Resist premature conclusions
• Ask what is being made possible – even amidst collapse. What adjacent possibilities can trade wars unlock?

Instead of analysing trade wars through the typical geopolitical or economic lens, we could examine them as “living prototypes” of emerging systems in global governance, technology sovereignty, or climate-aligned economics – revealing how nations are reimagining power, autonomy, interdependency, and values in a multipolar world.

So – what if we understood tariffs, sanctions, and decoupling not as breakdowns of global order, but as crude blueprints for the next phase of economic design? We could then also explore how trade wars may be unintentionally accelerating innovation in localised manufacturing, green technology independence, digital trade ecosystems and more. By shifting our perspective, we open up space to ask not just what’s breaking, but what’s being built.