The New York art market has just endured its first real test following President Donald Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs, with the major spring marquee auctions preceded by the Frieze and TEFAF fairs. Although most art is exempt from the tariffs, the uncertainty and stock market volatility following Trump’s announcement on April 2 jangled nerves. Nonetheless, auction totals remained comparable to last year’s USD 1.35 billion total, bringing in over USD 1.26 billion across Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips (but considerably down from the post-pandemic boom in 2022, when the total was USD 2.7 billion).

Economic protectionism rarely bodes well for a country’s art market and the global trade in contemporary art has been built off freedom of movement. So, is transactional friction and protectionist sentiment enough to knock New York off its perch as the leading art market center? If so, what other cities might stand to benefit? And might Trump’s nationalist position compound a broader drift from globalism to regionalism?

‘It’s not about tariffs per se; it’s about what we take for granted about the world that might actually change,’ says Amy Whitaker, an author and associate professor of visual arts administration at New York University. ‘The greater concern is the quiet, frog-in-boiling-water risk to institutions and the rule of law. Like all markets, art markets depend on trust in contracts and property rights.’ She places the current situation in a lateral context, ‘not of what happened historically in the art market but what is happening right now in all markets. Tariffs add spectacle, chaos, and uncertainty to what was already a somewhat soft art market.’ It seems likely, Whitaker says, that consignors ‘would de-risk sales by transacting either within the US or entirely outside it.’ She sees further opportunities for Paris, which has already benefitted from the protectionist policies of Brexit.

Alex Logsdail, the chief executive of Lisson Gallery, describes the mood in New York over the past fortnight as one of measured optimism. ‘The true impact of these changes may take several more months to fully emerge, but the general volatility has created a sense of caution,’ he says. While full-scale deglobalization seems unlikely, ‘the ease of cross-border movement that we’ve grown accustomed to may not be a given moving forward,’ Logsdail says. Geographical shifts are likely, ‘especially as market players look for more efficient routes around new frictions.’ But, Logsdail thinks, there is still no viable alternative to New York as a center – according to The Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report 2025, the US accounts for 43% of global sales by value. ‘Any significant shift away from that would be highly disruptive and likely take a long time to unfold,’ Logsdail adds.

Ben Brown, whose eponymous gallery has spaces in the UK, US, and Hong Kong, thinks the art market is ‘above succumbing to small-minded petty nationalism.’ April was ‘chaos,’ but since then, markets have rebounded to ‘Liberation Day’ levels, and business has been ‘relatively encouraging,’ especially in Asia, Brown says. ‘The Hong Kong stock market is up quite a lot over the past few months, which might be surprising given the US-China relationship. But I think everyone realizes that China will come out better off in the current China-Trump economic war,’ he adds.

While Yuki Terase, the Hong Kong-based cofounder of the advisory business Art Intelligence Global, notes some anxiety due to macroeconomic turbulence, she says that her firm sees ‘no tangible shift in the US’s dominant position in the market as a sales venue or as a consumer base and we don’t predict any change in the near future.’ There have been no ‘knee-jerk reactions’ nor anti-American sentiment among her clients, says Terase, who works with numerous Chinese collectors. Since tariffs on Chinese artworks have been in place since 2016, ‘the conception of artwork tariffs perhaps isn’t as much of a shock here,’ she points out. ‘Clients are becoming ever more sophisticated in their decision-making and transacting methods and are willing to astutely observe how the current macro uncertainty plays out and see if there are good opportunities to acquire or divest.’

There is no obvious replacement for New York as the global center of the art market – the UK (in second place at 18% of global sales by value) and China (in third at 15%) are still far behind the US. ‘Too many of the non-domiciled rich and the wealthy families have moved out of London, and therefore are not buying in London,’ says Philip Hoffman, the chief executive and founder of The Fine Art Group. Hong Kong is soft, too, thanks to a drop in Chinese buying, he says: ‘Most of the big buyers are the clients that Patti Wong [Hoffman’s Hong Kong-based partner] looks after, and they are totally global. The biggest market by far right now is still the US. They’ve got the most money, the most buying power.’

The lawyers Katalin Andreides, the founder and director of Andreides Law in Rome, and Till Vere-Hodge, a partner in art and cultural property at Payne Hicks Beach in London, agree. In an email interview, they wrote that ‘the sheer dominance of the US art market is likely to counteract any radical demise in the short run. US collectors, institutions, and family offices continue to drive the highest-value transactions, and there is a strong institutional ecosystem there.’

But some sectors of the art trade are more dependent on frictionless borders than others, say Andreides and Vere-Hodge, who coauthored The Art Trade in a ‘Zero Sum’ World essay in the latest Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report. ‘If international trade further fragments as a result of mercantilist policies, such segments may have to operate in increasingly domestic markets. Clearly, the larger a domestic market, the more attractive it is to sell artworks in such a market. One might expect to see larger domestic markets attract some subsidiaries of galleries and dealers that were previously only present in one or two global or international hubs.’ Such a shift may also result in increased competition within domestic markets or free trade areas, such as competitive tax rates among regional rivals.

Andreides and Vere-Hodge are currently witnessing ‘the first tentative signs of possible geographic shifts’ and a renewed interest in offshoring assets using freeports. This ties in with a trend among their clients, particularly younger buyers, who now ‘frequently ask about possible relocations of assets and ways in which ownership of collections may be structured, including across various jurisdictions.’

Shrewd maneuvering is key in this environment. Ultra-high-net-worth clients tend to have multiple homes and storage facilities around the world, so the point of sale does not really matter, so long as they can ship it to a tax-friendly jurisdiction. Although The Fine Art Group  sold nothing out of Asia during the latest New York sales, its Asian clients were still bidding, Hoffman says: ‘Some of them might ship [the artwork] to Switzerland or on to museum shows…they won’t necessarily put it in their house in Hong Kong or China – they’ve got houses in the US, in the UK, in Japan.’ He recalls a few years ago a Brazilian client who, faced with USD 28 million in duties for importing two high-value paintings to Brazil, decided to spend that money on an apartment in New York in which to put those paintings. While this is an extreme example, such behavior is not uncommon.

‘At the moment, we as art advisors are saying, sell privately. The worst place to burn a big picture is at auction, have a Giacometti night,’ says Hoffman, referring to a bronze bust by the artist which failed to sell last week at Sotheby’s New York when it was estimated in excess of USD 70 million, becoming the headline of the week for all the wrong reasons.

But private sales lack the urgency and competition traditionally associated with auctions. It is this lack of pressure to buy that defines the market at the moment – at fairs, in galleries, during auctions. And, when established centers are subdued, the industry goes looking for new growth markets. With considerable investment in arts infrastructure and oil-rich inhabitants, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries are currently touted as the new frontier. Historically, the major auction houses’ involvement with Dubai has been one of advance and retreat, its super-rich often preferring to buy their art and luxury goods abroad. But in February, Sotheby’s held its first commercial auction in Saudi Arabia and, just this week, Art Basel announced that it will launch a fifth fair in Doha in February 2026, in partnership with Qatar Sports Investments (QSI) and QC+, the commercial division of Qatar Museums.

'With the launch of Art Basel Qatar, we are tapping into a part of the world that has been relatively underserved in terms of its market infrastructure,' says Noah Horowitz, the CEO of Art Basel. 'The region is witnessing highly compelling wealth trends and an extraordinary demographic transformation, with a very young population. In parallel, there is a thriving arts ecosystem, with a lot of extraordinary artists and a flourishing institutional landscape. There is an enormous opportunity to further elevate artistic talent from the region and catalyze market growth.'

While the GCC may offer much-needed growth in a stagnant market, the biggest shift at the top of the industry today is not so much a geographical one, but that going on behind doors – from public to private, from onshore to offshore.