The post-Cold War consensus that geopolitics would remain peripheral to economic integration has collapsed. Two simultaneous crises - the Houthi-driven Red Sea shipping disruption that began in November 2023 and the escalating US-China tariff war, which reached an extraordinary 145 percent on Chinese imports by April 2025 - have delivered a profound shock to the architecture of global supply chains. This paper draws on trade data, logistics indices, central bank research, and policy reports to examine how these twin pressures are reshaping the movement of goods, the cost of doing business, and the strategic orientation of multinational firms. We trace the mechanisms through which maritime insecurity - and trade-policy uncertainty interact, the sectoral vulnerabilities they expose, and the adaptive responses - nearshoring, friendshoring, supplychain digitisation - they are accelerating. We argue that globalisation is not reversing but being rewired: firms are replacing single-country dependence with multi-node regional networks, accepting efficiency losses in exchange for resilience. The paper closes with policy recommendations and a research agenda for the era of geopolitical supply-chain risk.
Red Sea crisis, US-China trade war, global supply chains, geopolitical risk, friendshoring, nearshoring, supply chain resilience, maritime disruption