26Received 23.06.2025. Revised 07.07.2025. Accepted 01.09.2025.
Abstract. The deepening trend towards polycentrism has become one of the main reasons for the aggravation of trade contradictions between the leading participants of the global market. The foreign economic policy of developed countries is largely determined by the tasks associated with countering the onslaught of the PRC, but is not limited to them. It pursues the goals of reindustrialization and reducing dependence on imports, and is aimed at diversifying sources of supply of strategic goods. Unlike the United States, which prefers coercion to cooperation and ultimatums to compromises, the EU foreign trade policy is focused on expanding rather than curtailing external ties, on creating international alliances rather than isolationism. In China’s foreign economic policy, the goals of import substitution and import diversification are also quite clearly traced. They are focused mainly on the tasks of reducing dependence on foreign technology by building up its own scientific and technical potential, as well as increasing the importance of the domestic market compared to the foreign one. The trade war against the rest of the world, started by Washington, could become a catalyst for the division of the world economy into two blocs. Partial and temporary mutual isolation between blocs is possible. But a radical split will not occur: such an option would entail unacceptably high costs for everyone. The trend towards polycentrism does not make fragmentation of world trade inevitable. The first is determined by objective reasons – the emergence of new leaders in the world economy. The second depends on the foreign trade policy of the leading powers, in which the lines of import substitution and import diversification are clearly visible. Fragmentation is promoted by the import substitution policy, while diversification policy leads to the development of global trade. The interweaving of these two directions in the trade policy of leading countries makes the movement from polycentrism to fragmentation a story with an open ending.
Keywords: international trade, foreign trade policy, protectionism, import substitution, import diversification, polycentrism, fragmentation of the world economy
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