Twenty-First Century Shocks and Trends in Global Trade maps the major transformations in global trade since the late twentieth century and argues that the system has entered a volatile post-neoliberal interval marked by “slowbalization,” geopolitical rivalry, and renewed state intervention. Focusing on four structural shocks—the economic rise of China, the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the nationalist-populist wave associated with Trump and Brexit, and the COVID-19 pandemic—the chapter shows how neoliberal trade expansion plateaued and how supply-chain fragility re-legitimated industrial policy, subsidies, and strategic controls. It links shifting trade balances, financialization, and inequality to the politics of resentment and regime instability, emphasizing that trade shocks are not merely economic events but catalysts of ideological realignment. The chapter positions contemporary trade as an arena where coercive geoeconomics and competing post-neoliberal projects—authoritarian, neoliberal-authoritarian, and social-democratic—struggle to define the next rules of global integration.