The fracturing of the global financial system into rival blocs could shave as much as $6 trillion from world output, according to a new assessment that begins to quantify the price of severing the plumbing that connects national economies.

A World Economic Forum report estimates that geoeconomic fragmentation is already imposing an annual cost of $213 billion to $307 billion on the global economy, as tariffs and investment restrictions adopted from 2025 into early 2026 reshape trade and capital flows. The forum describes the period as a turning point in a decades-long trend toward integration.

The costs show up in familiar ways: higher inflation, weaker growth and duplicated infrastructure as companies and governments rebuild supply chains and payment systems along bloc lines. The report frames fragmentation not as a distant risk but as a process already underway and already being priced by markets.

The $6 trillion figure represents the extreme case in which the back-office systems that move money across borders — clearing, settlement and correspondent banking — are broken or duplicated. Even well short of that, fragmentation raises the cost of capital for smaller economies that cannot easily substitute for lost access to major financial centers.

Policymakers gathered at the forum urged coordinated action to preserve interoperable standards, warning that once networks split, the expense of rebuilding trust and infrastructure far exceeds the cost of preventing the break in the first place. The debate now turns on whether major powers see shared plumbing as a mutual asset or a strategic liability.

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