How come the trust regarding the physical goods themselves does not expand to the financial aspects of the transaction?
Maybe read up on trade finance :)
Let me rephrase: you don't need a public permissionless blockchain to have an append-only ledger that allow you to audit transactions. If you're not using a public permissionless blockchain, then there's nothing new that hasn't been around for decades. See also the paragraph about private blockchains in https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2019/02/theres_no_g...
Banks act as facilitators of such as transaction on import / export side, often have to interact with shipping / logistics and insurance providers to ascertain that goods have been sent in order to clear and settle payment from buyer to seller. It’s an entirely event-driven and very paper-based business with lots of complex processing logic which can very well be replaced by a smart contract, especially because each party may not trust each other a lot (eg exporter wishing to audit transactions of the importer’s bank). A blockchain works quite well for this type of problem.
Disclaimer: I do not work for Corda.