2018-09-21 09:41:00 Fri ET
technology antitrust competition bilateral trade free trade fair trade trade agreement trade surplus trade deficit multilateralism neoliberalism world trade organization regulation public utility current account compliance
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.
2017-01-11 11:38:00 Wednesday ET
Thomas Piketty's recent new book *Capital in the Twenty-First Century* frames income and wealth inequality now as a global economic phenomenon. When
2020-01-15 08:31:00 Wednesday ET
Anti-competitive corporate practices may stifle U.S. innovation. In recent decades, wage growth, economic output, and productivity tend to stagnate as U.S.
2019-07-09 15:14:00 Tuesday ET
The Chinese new star board launches for tech firms to list at home. The Nasdaq-equivalent new star board serves as a key avenue for Chinese tech companies t
2019-12-19 14:43:00 Thursday ET
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon views wealth inequality as a major economic problem in America. Dimon now warns that the rich Americans have been getting wea
2017-11-13 07:42:00 Monday ET
Top 2 wealthiest men Bill Gates and Warren Buffett shared their best business decisions in a 1998 panel discussion with students at the University of Washin
2018-07-05 13:40:00 Thursday ET
U.S. trading partners such as the European Union, Canada, China, Japan, Mexico, and Russia voice their concern at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in ligh