How Does Global Trade Work?

This story appears in the April issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

The world is covered in crisscrossing land, sea, and air routes linking multiple trading partners all across the globe. Throughout this constantly moving blur of shipping and receiving, international relationships are tested, and there's a need, in part, for a referee.

In 1995, the World Trade Organization (WTO) was established to help regulate world trade and to settle disputes among its 164 member states. In the United States (one of the group's founding members), President Trump has been taking a tough stance on trade. He recently floated the possibility of leaving the WTO and has talked of increasing tariffs on Mexican and Chinese goods, causing concern among the US's trading partners. It may be a difficult extraction, though, as the world has become a vast, interlinked, and sometimes interdependent marketplace.