Trouble with "de-risking": world needs trade, not war: SCMP

HONG KONG, June 26 (Xinhua) -- The trouble with "de-risking" is that the world needs trade, not war, reported the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong-based English-language daily.

"The name of the game has changed from 'free' trade to 'weaponized' trade," Anthony Rowley, a veteran journalist specializing in Asian economic and financial affairs, wrote in an opinion piece for the daily on Sunday.

In the 1930s, as the world economy descended into depression and multilateral trade collapsed, protectionist measures aimed at countries outside regional blocs reshuffled trade patterns, said the article, adding that making trade less secure and more costly escalated international tensions.

"Such trends are clearly visible again now as a U.S.-led group of major trading nations seek to decouple (or "de-risk", as they prefer to call it) their trade and supply chain networks from dependence on China, while China for its part seeks to build alternative networks," Rowley said.

Regionalism without the anchor of multilateralism may be more exposed to the powerful forces of disintegration, and regional trade arrangements could weaken and grow more discriminatory, concerned less with integration and inclined to erect protectionist walls against non-members, according to a paper by the International Monetary Fund cited by Rowley.