The rules-based centralised global economic architecture (GEA) worked well for a number of decades but has recently tend to become decentralised and fragmented with a large number of new regional and sub-regional institutions established in various regions of the world. The decentralisation process is expected to continue under the Trump Presidency as the US support for international economic institutions (IEIs) is expected to weaken while support for regional institutions will continue to remain strong thanks in part to economic dynamism in various parts of the world. This has posed a conundrum for the global order. The objectives of the research are: i) study the evolution and take stock of the various IEIs and the resulting GEA, ii) examine the benefits and costs of the decentralising architecture and recommend ways to minimise the costs while maximising the benefits to improve global governance and iii) identify Asia’s role in the evolving GEA.