Governed Authority Chains for International Trade

International trade already has document formats, standards bodies, customs systems, single windows, banks, carriers, freight forwarders, insurers, and dispute forums. The Universal Governance Kernel (UGK) should not replace them. Its proposed role is governance middleware: preserve the authority chain that caused a trade claim, amendment, decision, transfer, or release to occur. The domain profile asks five questions at each consequential handoff: what was intended, what purpose or mandate governed it, who had standing to act, what decision was made, and what durable evidence records the event. The central claim is architectural rather than empirical: existing systems can record documents and transactions while leaving the causal authority chain partly implicit; a UGK profile can make that chain explicit and testable. The paper develops a governed trade-event schema, invariants, a narrow pilot, and outcome measures. It does not establish legal recognition, standards conformance, fraud reduction, or economic benefit. The source's external references and quantitative statements were not verified in this review and remain gated before publication.