Trump's Reckless Threat to World Trade

摘要

Presumably at the insistence of the U.S. administration, the latest statement from the Group of 20 big economies conspicuously dropped the standard promise to "avoid all forms of protectionism." It's worth pausing to understand why that promise was ever worth making, and honoring. The reason is surely not that governments always keep their word. For years they've been backsliding on their ritual commitment to keep markets open-and partly for that reason, the prospects for world trade were already looking poor. But those prospects will be so much worse if governments, led by the U.S., come to regard protectionism as a policy to be openly embraced.