Anne Krueger explains why the Trump administration's current tariff tactics undermine the multilateral global trade system.

Fiona Sydney

2018-09-21 09:41:00 Fri ET

Former World Bank and IMF chief advisor Anne Krueger explains why the Trump administration's current tariff tactics undermine the multilateral global trade system. In the post-war era, America has led the way in establishing the troika of economic institutions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and World Trade Organization (WTO) (formerly known as General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)), that collectively form the primary basis of international economic order in place today. Due to the healthy expansion of a multilateral trade system under the WTO, world trade has grown 1.5 times faster than global GDP since World War II.

The WTO 164-member economies commit to supporting an open multilateral trade system with common rules and procedures. These rules achieve for international trade what domestic commercial codes accomplish for contracts and transactions between parties within a given jurisdiction. Under WTO rules, international trade partners are subject to the same national regulations just as domestic firms have the same rights in regional courts. Governments cannot discriminate against other WTO members, so trade benefits for one trade partner must apply to all other trade partners under WTO rules.

It is essential and paramount to ensure that trade partners receive fair regulatory and judicial treatment from WTO member-state governments, and the principle of non-discrimination has been a core tenet of the global trade system.

Under this WTO framework, the Trump administration now uses national-security concerns to justify hefty tariffs on steel-and-aluminum imports from China, Canada, Europe, Mexico, and Japan etc. Whether these tariffs would help reduce U.S. trade deficits remains complex and mysterious.

The Trump discriminatory tariffs undermine the WTO economic order and thereby induce China and some other countries to seek commensurate reparation through the WTO dispute-settlement mechanism.

These countries may retaliate against Trump tariffs and in turn would exacerbate the current global trade quagmire.

 


If any of our AYA Analytica financial health memos (FHM), blog posts, ebooks, newsletters, and notifications etc, or any other form of online content curation, involves potential copyright concerns, please feel free to contact us at service@ayafintech.network so that we can remove relevant content in response to any such request within a reasonable time frame.

Blog+More

Global financial markets suffer as President Trump promises *fire and fury* in response North Korean nuclear ambitions.

Daisy Harvey

2017-08-07 09:39:00 Monday ET

Global financial markets suffer as President Trump promises *fire and fury* in response North Korean nuclear ambitions.

Global financial markets suffer as President Trump promises *fire and fury* in response to the recent report that North Korea has successfully miniaturized

+See More

AYA finbuzz podcast offers fresh insights into the latest stock market topics, economic trends, and personal finance inspirations as of December 2019.

Amy Hamilton

2019-12-30 11:28:00 Monday ET

AYA finbuzz podcast offers fresh insights into the latest stock market topics, economic trends, and personal finance inspirations as of December 2019.

AYA Analytica finbuzz podcast channel on YouTube December 2019 In this podcast, we discuss several topical issues as of December 2019: (1) The Trump adm

+See More

Apple upstream semiconductor chipmaker TSMC boosts capital expenditures to $15 billion with almost 10% revenue growth by December 2019.

John Fourier

2019-11-11 09:36:00 Monday ET

Apple upstream semiconductor chipmaker TSMC boosts capital expenditures to $15 billion with almost 10% revenue growth by December 2019.

Apple upstream semiconductor chipmaker TSMC boosts capital expenditures to $15 billion with almost 10% revenue growth by December 2019. Due to high global d

+See More

Apple unveils 3 iPhone 11 models with new original video services and stars such as Oprah Winfrey, Jennifer Aniston, and Reese Witherspoon.

Joseph Corr

2019-10-13 16:22:00 Sunday ET

Apple unveils 3 iPhone 11 models with new original video services and stars such as Oprah Winfrey, Jennifer Aniston, and Reese Witherspoon.

Apple unveils 3 iPhone 11 models with new original video services and stars such as Oprah Winfrey, Jennifer Aniston, and Reese Witherspoon. Apple releases t

+See More

Central banks learn to weigh the monetary policy trade-offs between output and inflation expectations and macro-financial stress conditions.

Becky Berkman

2026-01-31 10:31:00 Saturday ET

Central banks learn to weigh the monetary policy trade-offs between output and inflation expectations and macro-financial stress conditions.

  In recent years, several central banks conduct, assess, and discuss the core lessons, rules, and challenges from their monetary policy framework r

+See More

The new world order of trade helps accomplish non-economic policy goals such as national security and technological dominance.

Amy Hamilton

2024-01-31 14:33:00 Wednesday ET

The new world order of trade helps accomplish non-economic policy goals such as national security and technological dominance.

The new world order of trade helps accomplish non-economic policy goals such as national security and technological dominance. To the extent that freer

+See More