Global trade is being rewritten by geopolitics, investment in future industries, services digitisation, AI and new digital trade rails. For treasurers, that’s more than a macro narrative: it’s a direct challenge to liquidity planning, risk management and working capital efficiency.
HSBC‘s recent Business of Expansion report indicates a strong appetite for international growth, with 77% of businesses planning to enter new overseas markets within the next two years. As patterns shift, treasury teams are increasingly central to enabling expansion while protecting resilience.
HSBC UK’s head of Global Trade Solutions Stephanie Betant says: “Working capital has moved from the background to the boardroom.” For treasurers, she argues, this means a sharper focus on their cash tied up across payables, receivables, and inventory.
Betant outlines five forces pushing trade from an operational topic to a strategic priority:
Policy – not just demand – is driving trade flows, with tariffs and sanctions becoming structural. While most trade still runs on World Trade Organization (WTO) Most Favoured Nation terms, more bilateral Free Trade Agreements are creating new corridors (for example, India-UK, EU-Mercosur and India-EU) and added complexity.
For treasury, that increases compliance burden and cost, and calls for stronger liquidity buffers, tighter FX governance as exposures shift quickly, and resilient payments infrastructure as corridors and counterparties change.
‘Future-shaping’ industries (advanced manufacturing, chips and EVs, AI, biotech and clean infrastructure) are attracting growing Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), which Betant notes “as reshaping”; for example EV and battery manufacturing is being reconfigured into new regional centres.
Two implications stand out: risk profiles change as new partners introduce unfamiliar currency, political and counterparty risks; and strategic transactions are returning, as corporates revisit acquisitions and major capital projects, requiring treasury to focus on resilience by getting ahead of funding, controls, and integration.
Services account for 64% of global GDP, but just 26% of global trade, a gap that’s closing fast. Services are expected to account for 55% of all new incremental trade between 2025 and 2030, with 65% digitally delivered. Barriers aren’t tariffs, but data localisation, licensing frameworks, and restrictions on cross-border digital service flows.
For treasury, services trade brings different cash-flow dynamics: payment cycles, currency exposures and financing structures look different when the “product” is intangible. Getting ahead of this shift can be a competitive advantage.
The WTO estimates AI could increase global trade by 35% by 2040. In treasury, AI is strengthening scenario planning, cash forecasting, and real-time risk monitoring. But Betant warns that reliance on a small number of platforms and vendors can create correlated failures and systemic vulnerabilities. AI can, however, deliver an edge, provided governance is robust and human judgement remains central.
Trade finance is still document-heavy, slowing settlement and locking up cash. Betant expects smart contracts and trade asset distribution to reduce friction, speed up trade and free up treasury time. Adoption is progressing more slowly than in payments, but early engagement can position treasurers to capture efficiency gains as scale arrives, she says.
HSBC UK recommends practical steps to strengthen resilience and enable growth: stress-test liquidity for tariff, volume and corridor shocks; refresh FX and hedging governance; map compliance and counterparty risk across wider supply chains; build a services-trade playbook for digital delivery and collections; set AI governance (including vendor concentration); and accelerate trade digitisation to reduce manual processing and unlock cash for working capital.
Alex Gray is editor of The Treasurer
