Frank Lavin

We are at the moment, the first in seventy-five years, where there is no international consensus in support of trade. Indeed, trade is unloved, unsupported, and even unwanted. There is no shortage of topics in the rhetoric of trade complaints: from the rapid rise of China to Coronavirus as a metaphor for the evils of greater connectivity. Regardless of the validity of these complaints, none of them negate the central truth of trade: countries that engage in trade...

President Trump assumed office with one of the more purposeful trade agendas in modern history: he pulled the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, launched a renegotiation of the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement, and is now threatening to take the US out of NAFTA. He is also considering other measures that would reduce trade activity – most of it supposedly to reduce the US trade deficit. The US Administration needs a new trade policy strategy if it wants to...