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The next White House occupant will have the unprecedented opportunity to decide the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement’s (USMCA’s) fate. USMCA contains a sunset clause, Article 34.7, which terminates the Agreement in 2036 unless the parties agree to extend it through a “joint review” process set to begin on July 1, 2026. Readers facing more immediate challenges in 2024 might question the urgency of a decision that lies two years in the future, under an undetermined administration, and whose direct legal effect is delayed for ten years after that. But the USMCA’s implementing legislation, 19 USC § 4611, requires the President to “consult with the appropriate congressional committees and stakeholders”, as well as relevant executive branch officials, and to “provide opportunity for the presentation of views in relation to the operation of the USMCA, including a public hearing” at least 270 days before each joint review. To readers with a stake in North American trade—that is, at minimum, all North Americans: the time to strategize your participation is now.

The sunset clause was controversial, not least because it introduced little more to the Agreement than the fretful insistence of a doomsday clock. As former President Trump’s Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer has noted, “[m]ost trade agreements, for reasons that don’t make any sense to me, are eternal… this one is temporal, although it’s complicated how it works.” The Agreement is initially set to expire 16 years from the date it enters into force. Every six years, the Free Trade Commission (or FTC, a group of minister-level government representatives from each party) conducts a joint review during which they decide whether or not to extend the Agreement by six years. If they extend the Agreement, then they can simply wait until the next joint review; otherwise, they must conduct annual reviews until the original expiration date. At any time in between, they may change their minds and extend the Agreement. The FTC may also, of course, meet between joint reviews and establish, dissolve, or otherwise collaborate with committees, working groups, and other subsidiary bodies to aid its decision-making. In May 2024, for example, the FTC held its fourth meeting, where it “took note of readouts from the Working Group for Cooperation on Agricultural Biotechnology and the Committees on Textiles, Technical Barriers to Trade, Good Regulatory Practices, State-Owned Enterprises and Designated Monopolies, and Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises.” Aside from consultation with and reporting to congressional committees, USMCA does not reserve any particular authority for Congress in the joint review process, so from a legal perspective the outcome depends on the executive branch—Congress’s role is essentially political.

Adrienne Sunset Clause

What readers should take most interest in is the process, specifically the approach that each prospective administration is likely to employ in a joint review, and the opportunities that each approach is likely to open to stakeholders to influence decision-making. Some predict that neither Trump nor Biden (or likely Harris) would extend USMCA in 2024. But like choices, in this case, will not lead to like results. When it comes to addressing some of the toughest challenges recognized on both sides of the political aisle, the two administrations’ approaches are rooted in fundamentally incompatible philosophical principles and priorities. Possibilities for stakeholder engagement, and outcomes for stakeholders, vary accordingly.

Trump and “Lighthizerism”

Trump has a clear vision for trade policy: wield it like a club and beat negotiating partners with it until they give him what he wants. In his second term, Trump has proposed a “ring around the country,” meaning a 60% tariff on all goods from China and a 10% tariff on all goods from all other countries (in addition to the Section 201, 232, and 301 tariffs his last administration imposed, as well as existing antidumping and countervailing measures). The architect of Trump’s trade framework was former USTR Robert Lighthizer. The two are reportedly still close, and Lighthizer would likely play a prominent role in Trump’s next administration, perhaps as Treasury secretary. For that reason, readers will benefit from an understanding of Lighthizer’s perspective on trade.

During Trump’s first term, international political economy scholar Quinn Slobodian observed that “Lighthizerism departs from standard free trade philosophy […] in its commitment to using an openly politicized arsenal of tools” to improve the US’s trade deficit; in its scorn for constructivist, multilateral approaches in favor of transactional, bilateral ones; and in its embrace of unilateral executive action to “[unsettle] existing arrangements and [push] partners to the negotiating table.” Lighthizer began his trade career as a deputy US trade representative in the 1980s, when the American factory worker’s bogeyman was a Japanese manager, not a Chinese bureaucrat, and the Reagan administration was combatting global industrial competition by pioneering the use of “aggressive unilateralism” in the form of Section 301 tariffs. In Slobodian’s view, Lighthizer hardened his philosophy in the crucible of 1980’s trade conflicts, which Lighthizer believes the “icon of modern conservatism, Ronald Reagan, [won by imposing] quotas on imported steel, protect[ing] Harley-Davidson from Japanese competition, restrain[ing] imports of semiconductors and automobiles, and [taking] myriad similar steps to keep American industry strong.”

Citing congressional testimony by Lighthizer in 2018, Slobodian illustrates how Lighthizerism has adapted to a world where China is the US’s new super-competitor by “taking a page from the playbook of what [he] sees as [the US’s] main adversary: Chinese state capitalism.” After reflecting on a Congress member’s question about whether the US, with all of its democratic restraints, can rely on tariffs to sustain a long-term competition with an unrestrained non-democracy like China, Lighthizer responded: “[The Chinese] do take a longer view, which by the way, I think is the right view. To the extent we can, we ought to be taking it.” Lighthizer elaborated more recently during an interview he gave at Harvard, lauding China’s use of a “mercantilist economic policy” to create surpluses, which in his judgment “they’re smart to do.” While more analysis would be necessary to draw clear parallels between Lighthizerism’s role in a Trump administration’s overall industrial policy and Chinese-style state capitalism, the strategy that Lighthizer lifts from China’s playbook is to make full use of the concentrated power of the executive branch. Imposing tariffs by unilateral executive action—as Trump did with Section 301, for example—is Lighthizer’s way of enacting a mercantilist policy, as he believes China can, without interference from a Congress whose constituents are broadly supportive of free trade. Under Lighthizerism, in Slobodian’s framing, democratic accountability is “an unfair disadvantage that the adversary does not share.”

Bodog Poker To be sure, a democratic administration would employ the same tools—after all, it would face the same global challenges. Biden has not lowered the Trump-era tariffs, and in fact has expanded them in product categories such as solar panels, electric vehicles, batteries, steel and aluminum, and some medical products. And Biden USTR Katherine Tai’s view on the proper goals of trade policy coincides with Lighthizer’s in certain respects, at least rhetorically, in particular with regard to labor. In Lighthizer’s words: “We need a worker-focused trade policy not a corporate, price-centered one.” During her time as USTR, Tai has famously pioneered a similar-sounding “worker-centered” trade policy. But for Tai, this policy involves strategies such as using USMCA’s Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM), as well as multi-stakeholder negotiations, to improve labor standards in Mexico so that American employers can less easily use the threat of offshoring against organized American workers. Lighthizer’s vision for a worker-centered trade policy, insofar as he has articulated one, is fundamentally different.

Lighthizer’s worker-centered policy appears to revolve around the traditional tool of granting or withholding market access, largely by adjusting tariff rates through executive action, and aims primarily to “eliminate the trade deficits that are bleeding our country to death and achieve balanced trade.” For Lighthizer, tariffs are a worker-centered trade policy. They are the persuasive power that a Trump FTC representative would open-carry at every joint review. They are the tools at the disposal of working groups, committees, and any other stakeholder who wishes to have a voice in trade negotiations. Readers with a stake in trade policy, including the upcoming USMCA joint review, should think carefully about how far these tools can take them towards reaching their own goals (especially considering that they are readily available to any administration), about what opportunities they do or do not create, and about who bears their costs and benefits. More on that next time.

The next part in this series outlines some of the major trade issues that will be on the table during joint review, focusing on the Mexico-US relationship, and anticipates Harris’s likely approach to trade policy.

To read the insight as it was published on the JD Supra webpage, click here.

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When the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement was being negotiated it was seen an exception. Instead of opening up trade, its goal was to ease the transition from the United Kingdom being part of the EU’s single market to a relationship primarily based on World Trade Organization rules. 

Whole policy areas typically included in free trade agreements such as public procurement are largely absent of this agreement. The European Union insisted on extensive level-playing field provisions in the expectation of the UK cheating. 

In retrospect, though, the TCA should perhaps have been seen as warning. Modern trade negotiations increasingly take place with a similar underlying atmosphere of suspicion. 

EU-Mercosur free trade agreement negotiations have for some time been moving in the direction of mutual distrust about what the other parties might do. Sometimes it is hard to recall that this agreement is supposed to increase trade. 

There are many more examples, whether from the EU and Australia, or almost anything the United States has done in trade policy since 2016. 

For businesses seeking a renewed free trade agreement agenda there is a fundamental problem. If you don’t change the mood, what is discussed will be more about market access conditions than openness.  

Any agreement reached in this way is unlikely to deliver much growth. 

What we may see in the UK-EU relationship in the coming years is a return to something more positive. There is every reason to believe deepening ties will lead to better agreements. 

Those seeking openness should heed this lesson. Mutual goodwill must be the basis of the free trade agreement agenda. 

Improving the mood between UK and EU 

In the early weeks of the new UK government there has been a noticeable change in attitudes towards the EU. Most notable were early calls from new ministers to their EU counterparts – which would have been unthinkable under previous governments since 2016. 

New foreign secretary David Lammy visited Poland, Sweden and Germany the weekend after the election. Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds spoke with Valdis Dombrovskis on the phone and met at the G7 trade ministers meeting in July. 

The UK successfully hosted the second meeting of the European Political Community. Although there were no concrete deliverables, the EU leaders present spoke positively about London’s approach. 

Labour’s plans for enhancing trade relations with the EU remain formally rather modest. Agreements on sanitary and phytosanitary issues, visas for touring artists and recognition of qualifications are the frequently mentioned items. 

There are internal discussions on going further than that. 

Though evidently an awkward topic for the UK, there is a growing awareness of the need to respond to EU asks on youth mobility.  

Joint work on economic security, regulatory alignment and aligning Emissions Trading Schemes are also under consideration. 

Concrete agreements, even negotiations, may be some time away. Thinking has however started on both sides about what these may contain. 

Allowing officials to think creatively 

At a time when trade agreements were driven by more open attitudes, negotiators were empowered to find ways around problems. 

Through ministerial example, UK civil servants have also been given permission to engage with EU counterparts.  

Before the UK election, many officials in relevant areas could not wait to be allowed to test ideas on progressing particular issues with the EU. Now we can expect them to act on this. 

Formally, the EU line is to wait for proposals from London. In reality, many in Brussels will be equally keen to engage.  

Commission officials are already developing their thinking as to how discussions could be structured.  

This isn’t just about those working in EU institutions. Businesses and other stakeholders will take their signals from governments. 

There is ample opportunity for joint UK and EU industry positions. On past evidence this can be an effective tool to help forge agreements. 

Indeed, the extension of generous rules of origins for electric vehicles in the TCA at the end of last year, was considerably helped by joint pressure by the car industry. 

Goodwill is often infectious. Although the pain of recent UK-EU negotiations won’t be easily forgotten, a new picture can be built over this experience. 

The EU-Switzerland talks are perhaps ahead of the UK in this regard. Two previously troublesome relationships are therefore in recovery. 

Whether this can be transferred to other EU relationships remains however to be seen. 

European Union needs to recover its confidence 

If politicians create the impetus for their officials, there will only be a limited amount that EU negotiators can achieve right now. 

Pressure comes from several directions. Overt protectionism across the political spectrum means prospects for France ratifying any future trade agreements seem remote.  

Meanwhile many MEPs from various member states put pressure on trade from various angles, including with environmental, labour and nationalist arguments. 

Summarising the problem, Ursula von der Leyen’s ‘Political Guidelines’ released in July ahead of her confirmation vote as European Commission president for a second term sees trade as both an opportunity and a problem. Talk of “long-term, mutually beneficial partnerships” is undermined by suspicion. 

Translated into day-to-day operations, such messages are easily received by those at the front line as them not being fully trusted. However much it is claimed that the targets are really the third countries concerned. 

Some time ago, when I discussed Indian resistance to trade agreements with informed observers, lack of public trust in negotiators emerged as an unexpected reason for it. In this specific Indian case, there would be suspicions of corruption if too much was given away.  

In the EU or US, it is more likely that creative officials could be seen as part of the ‘deep state’. This makes productive bodog casino negotiations extremely difficult. 

To have a renewed trade agreement agenda, negotiators have to feel empowered. To use a particular term disliked by some, a safe space must be created. 

Right now, in most EU negotiations, that is not sufficiently present. Negotiations are thus bound to flounder. 

Atmospherics can change this, as we are starting to see with the UK. Though this has to be sustained if there are to be agreement in the end. 

Tricky though it will be, the most siren political voices need to be quietened for significant progress on trade policy and positive associations built with the idea of openness for workers and consumers.  

That’s outside the political mood of the moment and that’s why we’re struggling. 

Businesses need to seek to change to the mood music before demanding more agreements.

To read the perspective as it was published on the Borderlex webpage, click here.

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President Ruto needs to show to his people that democracy delivers for Kenya. The United States has been a strong supporter of this goal. We can still do more.

Kenya is one of our most critical allies on an increasingly important continent; a booming population means that within a decade, 1 in 5 people on the planet will be living in Sub-Saharan Africa. While the rest of the world gets older, the median age in Africa is only 19. African countries have massive reserves of critical minerals, renewable energy, and arable land. It is their human resources, however, that are most valuable and some of the fastest growing in the world.

Someone who understands these facts well is U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Meg Whitman. In the burgeoning tech hub of East Africa, Whitman has been a tireless cheerleader for Kenya’s economic growth and potential. She has championed its growing manufacturing sector and its compelling use of renewable energy sources, which power most of the country’s energy needs.

Whitman’s approach is exactly what’s needed in Africa as a whole: an enthusiastic U.S. push for democratic ideals coupled with equitable economic growth. Through the bipartisan African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), the United States has for two decades provided broad market access to sub-Saharan African countries and encouraged U.S. private sector investment. It also incentivizes good governance, workers’ rights and the rule of law. In Kenya, AGOA has jumpstarted the emergence of a promising apparel sector, creating job opportunities and economic growth.

Unfortunately, AGOA expires next year. Without an early reauthorization, global industry may turn away from opportunities in Africa. That’s why Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) and I introduced the AGOA Renewal and Improvement Act of 2024 last month. This bill would extend the program to 2041, providing businesses the long-term certainty they need to move their supply chains away from China and invest in Africa.

Kenya is more than just part of a growing economic bloc, however — it is an example for its neighbors in a rapidly changing part of the world. Kenyans have fought hard to be a democracy on a continent that has more coups than any other. A country that is already facing the effects of climate change, Kenya has stepped up to the plate as a partner in conservation efforts. In this, too, the United States can do more. By bolstering public-private partnerships in communities that manage protected and conserved areas, we can protect the environment while investing in the people who live in and around these natural wonders.

Kenya is also a critical security partner both within Africa and beyond. Last year, the U.S. and Kenya signed a five-year defense cooperation agreement, strengthening the already strong relationship between our armed forces. Whether it’s partnering on counterterrorism efforts in East Africa, the anti-Houthi task force in the Red Sea, or the Multinational Security Support mission to Haiti, the United States and Kenya are working together on strategic goals not just for our countries but the world. This week we will reaffirm our security partnership, particularly in the face of a growing Russian footprint in Africa.

The United States has also prioritized delivering on better investments in development and offering an alternative to China’s debt-trap diplomacy. China far and away dominates trade with Africa, investing three times as much in the continent as American counterparts. To this, the United States has an answer: the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC). By investing early in companies, the DFC can provide the funding needed to ensure new ideas and innovation can succeed without opaque and high-priced Chinese loans.

The tests Kenya faces are echoed across the continent and the globe. Their approach is rooted in a belief in democracy, in expanding opportunity, and collaborating with partners, including the United States. It’s a testament to President Biden’s leadership that he recognizes that a close relationship with Kenya is essential to our country’s success, and that a state visit from a Kenyan president sends a signal of our seriousness.

This visit is smart and strategic for both President Ruto and President Biden, and reflects a collaborative, forward-thinking perspective on tackling the urgent global challenges of our time. Ever since I first set foot in Nairobi 40 years ago, a bright-eyed college student, I knew I had entered a special, dynamic place full of potential. Now the rest of the world sees that, too. This state visit demonstrates American commitment to Kenyans — not just for this week, but for generations to come.

Chris Coons is the junior senator from Delaware and is a member of the Foreign Relations Committee.

To read the full opinion piece as it appears on the The Hill, click here. 

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Looming elections in India, the United States, and Mexico, plus a newly installed administration in Indonesia, severely restricted the room for maneuver and crushed any inclination to compromise.

Where the negotiating efforts fell short of agreement – in agriculture, fisheries subsidies, and reform of the organization’s crippled dispute settlement system – the outcome was almost preordained. India was not going to risk blowback from its farmers or fishers and the US was not going to yield on a newly minted Appellate Body.

In her concluding press conference, WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala referenced the many strong headwinds confronting MC13 including the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, slumping demand in many economies, and pending elections in more than 60 countries in 2024. She tried to put a brave face on the results from the five-day meeting by suggesting what trade ministers achieved was “pretty amazing” and that the glass was “three-quarters full.”

To be sure, there were some positive results, including the accessions of Comoros and Timor Leste and the entry into force of the 2021 agreement on Domestic Regulation in Services.

But on the major issues, WTO members came up empty.

No deal on agriculture

Agriculture talks ran asunder on India’s demand to make permanent a “peace clause” agreed in 2013 which shields New Delhi from any legal ramifications for breaching its limits on allowable farm subsidies used in its public stockholding program. The building of food stocks is permissible under WTO rules, but India purchases rice from farmers at inflated levels through its Market Price Support system which leads to greater production. Many of India’s trading partners believe the rice reserves, meant to build up domestic stocks, are later exported.

During one small group meeting, Thailand’s ambassador to the WTO, Pimchanok Vonkorpon Pitfield, alleged that 40% of rice held bodog sportsbook review in the subsidized Indian public stocks was being exported. Infuriated Indian officials, including trade minister Piyush Goyal, told Okonjo-Iweala and the conference chair that India would not attend further meetings if Pitfield was present.

No deal on fisheries

Negotiations to expand on the 2022 agreement curtailing fisheries subsidies likewise ran aground. The agreement struck at MC12 banned subsidies for illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. This was an important achievement but the subsidies most responsible for depleting fish stocks globally are those that lead to overfishing and overcapacity. The goal at MC13 was to ban subsidies for fishery-related shipbuilding, labor, and fuel, among other things. Once again, India was front-and-center arguing that its fishers should be able to receive unlimited subsidies if fishing in sovereign waters. Developed countries, India proposed, would meanwhile ban all deepwater subsidies while developing countries could continue such support for 25 years.

Pacific island nations argued that subsidies for deepwater fishing must be banned, something the Chinese could not accept. About one-third of the world’s fishing vessels are Chinese-owned and many of them fish waters throughout Asia but also off the coast of Africa and Latin America. China also objected to US demands that any vessels that use forced labor must register themselves as such.

No deal on dispute settlement

Earlier efforts to reform the dispute settlement system had borne fruit in the form of a document produced by former Guatemalan delegate Marco Molina. Molina’s text, widely praised by delegates, proposed increased emphasis on arbitration and mediation and stricter limits on the length of submissions.

Molina avoided in his text the fractious issue of the WTO’s Appellate Body, which remains scuttled by a US embargo on bench appointments. But none of this mattered when Molina was mysteriously fired by his own government shortly before MC13 began.

Without Molina, it seems a tall order to bridge the vast differences separating members on appellate reform.

Pyrrhic victory on e-commerce

Even the surprising decision to extend a moratorium on the application of import duties on e-commerce transmissions rang hollow. India, South Africa, and Indonesia sought an end to the moratorium, which was first agreed at that 1998 Ministerial Conference in Geneva. These countries maintain that the application of such duties will boost their revenues, though many studies indicate otherwise. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said in a report that such a tax would generate only 0.1% of India’s total government revenue while raising costs and hampering competitiveness of poorer economies and smaller companies.

The hardline taken by India, South Africa, and Indonesia led many to suspect that compromise was not on the cards. But India has a close relationship with the MC13 host United Arab Emirates.

So when the Emirati trade minister Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi asked Goyal to extend the moratorium as a personal favor, Goyal agreed. The South Africans and Indonesians then went along with the growing consensus.

The pledge to keep digital trade duty-free will come to an end at the next ministerial meeting or 31 March 2026, whichever comes first. Individual WTO members may choose to roll the moratorium over or make it permanent, but as an organization the duty-free commitment will be dropped. For the first time, the WTO will open the door for tariff hikes and create the conditions for the unprecedented application of duties on trade in services. Call it MC13’s Pyrrhic victory.

Plurilaterals make small gains

Hopes ran high before MC13 that ministers would greenlight two plurilateral agreements so that they could be incorporated into the WTO’s legal architecture. Plurilateral agreements are a way for smaller groups of WTO members to build consensus as it gets increasingly harder for the full membership to move as one.

eliHowever, India and South Africa have long opposed plurilateral negotiations.

These two members have couched their protests on plurilateral negotiations in arcane legal arguments, but the reality is far simpler – New Delhi and Pretoria abhor these negotiations because they cannot block them.

This hostility was made plain in Abu Dhabi when the two members blocked proponents’ efforts to incorporate plurilaterally agreed text on Investment Facilitation for Development into the WTO rulebook.

The plurilateral agreement on Domestic Regulation in Services met a better fate. The legal structure of this agreement, which includes 71 participating members and covers 92% of world trade in services, is based on individual members’ commitments to the others and is thus much more difficult to undermine. Aware of the shaky legal foundation of their objections, India and South Africa partially lifted their blockade on the agreement, allowing it to come into force.

So, six key takeaways in the aftermath of MC13:

1. The WTO is not going anywhere. Prognosticators enjoy using phrases like death knell when examining the WTO’s shortcomings but the collapse of the organization and the system it oversees is not going to happen. A foundation based on 75 years of rulemaking is too ingrained in the trading practices of nations and businesses. If every country applied different and variable tariffs on its trading partners, chaos would swiftly ensue. The question about the WTO is not whether it will continue to exist, but how relevant it will be.
2. MC13 underscored that if members want to accomplish anything, plurilateral negotiations are the only viable option. Some important lessons were learned in Abu Dhabi about how results from these negotiations might be implemented. This will have meaningful ramifications particularly with respect to the 90-member negotiations on electronic commerce. The plurilateral process is increasingly the WTO’s only e-commerce game in town.
3. When the new dispute settlement is reformed, it will have a very different look. Many smaller, poorer members seek ways to access the complex and costly process of dispute resolution. One way to do that would be through incentives to use mediation and arbitration. It’s unclear how a new Appellate Body would look but it’s inconceivable that there will be a return to a powerful WTO “court.” A pared-down and less heavy-handed mechanism is inevitable.
4. Economies still want to join the WTO. With the accessions of Comoros and Timor-Leste, the WTO will have 166 members. There are 22 candidate countries still in the accession queue. None of the current members have ever expressed a desire to leave. Whatever criticisms there may be on the WTO, governments still believe there is value in membership.
5. Several major systemic issues were not really addressed at MC13, including the use of national security exemptions. The dispute settlement cases on the national security exception have strained the system to its breaking point. Given the tense state of the world today, such cases are unlikely to disappear. There are also unresolved questions over China’s formal status in the WTO as a developing economy that is also the world’s largest trading nation.
6. Okonjo-Iweala’s future is uncertain. Her term expires at the end of August 2025. The process of reappointing her or choosing her successor will start in December. The US may not back her for a second term, especially if Donald Trump wins. In Abu Dhabi, Okonjo-Iweala worked around the clock and to the very end to broker deals. But her tactics angered two powerful members, India and Brazil, and some delegates in Geneva say they are weary of her work style.

Keith M. Rockwell is a Senior Research Fellow at the Hinrich Foundation. Prior to his retirement in June 2022, Keith served as a Director at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and spokesperson for the organization for more than 25 years. He also is a Global Fellow at the Wilson Center.

To read the full article published by the Hinrich Foundation, click here.

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In this increasingly complex landscape, the world needs a system to tackle challenges of the bodog sportsbook review global commons, diffuse trade conflicts, and tap into new growth opportunities. Only a revitalized World Trade Organization (WTO) can serve this purpose. Contrary to misguided views of the WTO as an irrelevant outfit or a strait jacket that obstructs the pursuit of legitimate national goals, the WTO matters. Now, more than ever.

Of course, reforming the WTO will not be easy, but it can be done. The global trading system has confronted challenges before, and governments have found ways to reinvent it. We owe this in no small measure to the trading system’s flexibility.

Trade frictions: Déjà vu all over again

Neither tensions in the trading system nor their underlying causes are new. Already in the late 1970s, the eminent scholar John H. Jackson was concerned that the sluggishness of the world economy at the time, a growing scepticism about free trade, the downsides of economic interdependence, and divergent economic structures across major participants would corrode the system. Governments did not allow that to happen, even if they took some time to sort things out.

After complex and drawn-out negotiations, the WTO was established in 1995 with an expanded rulebook, a strengthened monitoring role and an effective mechanism to resolve trade conflicts. The reformed system underpinned a rapid expansion of global commerce which in turn unleashed an era of unprecedented prosperity and poverty reduction, even if not all people or places shared equally in the benefits.

Can the WTO help this time around and if so, how?

As the global economy recovers from massive global shocks, the world needs the WTO as much as ever.

First, the WTO can assist countries tap into new sources of trade growth. Digital technologies, for example, have boosted trade in services, offering new possibilities for trade diversification, jobs and innovation. Global exports of digitally delivered services, which totalled US$3.7 trillion in 2021, have been growing much faster than goods exports since 2005 and the prospects are bright (see Figure 2). For countries like Costa Rica, the Philippines, Ghana and India, digitally-enabled services already represent 20 percent of their total exports. Negotiations by groups of WTO members to cut red tape and facilitate services trade, improve the investment climate and foster digital trade are all valuable in unleashing much needed trade-led growth and development opportunities, including for people and countries that have remained on the margins of the global economy.

Second, the WTO is needed to help resolve problems of the global commons. Climate change is a case in point. A successful response to climate change can be achieved only if all countries act in a coordinated and decisive way, including on trade issues. The key here is to leverage the full power of the global market to exploit countries’ green comparative advantage. Trade cost reduction can also accelerate the diffusion of relevant technologies, spur innovation and create deeper and less concentrated markets that are better able to withstand global shocks, whether from extreme weather events, pandemics or disruptions of agricultural supply chains.

Third, the WTO can help manage and de-escalate trade tensions. One growing source of stress that requires urgent attention is subsidies. Subsidies were the most frequent form of intervention after the financial crisis of 2008, surpassing tariffs and other non-tariff measures, and representing nearly half of recorded interventions during 2009-2021 (Figure 3). While subsidies can help achieve important policy goals, as the experience with the development of COVID-19 vaccines shows, they can also lead to trade conflict, including among governments pursuing the same goals and operating within similar economic systems. The steady rise of official handouts over the past decade or so also feeds into perceptions that the playing field is tilted in favour of those holding the largest purse, adding to a sense of unfairness in global trade. The way in which different systems use subsidies to support policy goals, and the transparency or lack thereof of specific programs, adds fuel to the fire.

A dedicated dialogue involving all key players, supported by enhanced information, solid evidence, and objective analytics, is needed to look into the implications of subsidies for the global trading system.

More broadly, the restoration of a fully effective dispute settlement mechanism, perhaps comprising a basket of tools for resolving controversies, is indispensable. Absent such a mechanism, norms become good guidance at best; at worst, bad behaviour risks becoming contagious and eroding the system.

Don’t take the status quo for granted

The WTO rests on strong fundamentals, which have served the world well for over 70 years. The system requires adjustment, urgently. Without reform of the WTO, unleashing new sources of trade growth, using trade to resolve global common problems and managing trade tensions will become elusive. A fragmented trading system will become more likely.

The costs should not be underestimated (see Figure 4). They could well surpass those of the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, leading to increased concentration of risks, reduced resilience and distorted value chains. It would be inflationary just at a time when governments are deploying all tools to bring inflation under control. And it would stifle competition, innovation and technological collaboration, the main drivers of human progress. All countries would be affected but trade fragmentation would disproportionately impact the poorest countries. In today’s world, however, all things are connected. If goods cannot flow freely, people will find a way to look for better opportunities.

In the current geopolitical context, some rearrangement of production networks appears inevitable. In fact, while highly efficient, certain supply chains are also too highly concentrated geographically. In a world with stronger and more frequent shocks, investing in backup supply chains, while expensive, may be a solution.

The risk of course is that measures to pursue supply chain resilience or other strategic considerations turn into a free-for-all that ends up subverting the global trading system. A focused multilateral dialogue to develop a shared understanding is needed about possible parameters of concentrated supply chains and the guardrails that would be needed to minimize negative spillovers from policy measures.

Building on WTO pragmatism to make reform happen

WTO reform must be guided by the basic principles that have propelled the global trading system forward for over seven decades – confidence building through transparency; non-discrimination; fairness; trade cost reduction; and pragmatism. Pragmatism allows for exceptions, waivers and other tools to manage adjustment within the system and achieve coherence between trade and other policy goals.

WTO rules are not set by a supranational body. Governments agree to them in what are naturally difficult negotiating processes. Precisely because officials understand the benefits and challenges associated with increased trade cooperation, escape valves are built into the system to allow sovereign nations to pursue legitimate national security or other objectives while reducing spillover effects on third countries. Put differently, while it provides flexibility, the system aims to prevent protectionism spiralling out of control, making sure that transitional measures do not drive permanent wedges into global trade integration.

WTO reform is likely to be a slow burn, rather than a big bang. Bits and pieces of this reform are already crystallizing in small group conversations or broad-based committee discussions. But more is required. Negotiations need focused, high-level acceleration to ensure that the WTO can be better equipped to serve its members in a more complex and rapidly changing trade policy environment.

Just like they did in the past, governments must rekindle a spirit of self-interest and do the hard work of revitalizing the WTO to match the size of the challenges facing global trade. This is the time to make it happen.

To read the full article, please click here.

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For starters, the new agreement doesn’t even touch the Section 232 tariffs on aluminum from Japan, nor does it actually eliminate Trump’s steel tariffs. Instead, the deal simply replaces the steel tariffs with a complex “tariff rate quota” (TRQ) system, under which 1.25 million metric tons (MMT) of Japanese steel — applied to 54 different product categories on a first‐​come, first served quarterly basis (with little period‐​to‐​period flexibility) — will be allowed to enter the United States tariff‐​free. Any Japanese imports above that amount will remain subject to the existing 25%, “national security” tariffs.

Given the quota amount and design, moreover, it’s quite likely that significant volumes of Japanese steel will still face — and American importers will thus keep paying — U.S. tariffs. Most obviously, the 1.25 MMT quota limit has been set well below pre‐​tariff volumes and even further below the amounts that would likely enter the U.S. today in the absence of any trade restrictions. According to my former colleagues at the law firm of White & Case, for example, Japanese steel imports “averaged approximately 2.03 MMT during the pre‐​duty 2015–2017 period” — a period that was experiencing far less industrial demand than today. Thus, the new TRQ level is, at best, set at a paltry 61% of current U.S. market demand and probably much lower than that. As we explained with the EU agreement, the U.S.-Japan deal will therefore keep U.S. steel prices high, leaving steel‐​consuming American manufacturers at a significant disadvantage versus their global competitors. Indeed, the EU deal has now been in place several weeks, and U.S.hot-rolled steel prices are still far higher than prices in Europe and elsewhere:

White & Case further notes that the Japan agreement is actually more restrictive than the EU deal because it likely will count Japanese steel currently excluded from the Section 232 tariffs against the new TRQ limits. (The EU deal expressly exempted these imports from the TRQs, meaning more duty‐​free European imports overall.) The tariff‐​supporting Steel Manufacturers Association naturally celebrated this provision, noting that 550,000 metric tons of steel products — almost half of the new TRQ — entered under an exclusion last year. Once you factor in this already‐​excluded steel, the Japan deal’s tariff liberalization — and thus its effect on U.S. prices and relief for U.S. manufacturers — becomes even more modest.

The quota’s design, which essentially mirrors the EU agreement, will further limit this tariff relief. As we discussed in November, for example, “TRQs administered in this fashion are sure to introduce distortions, for example, large U.S. importers stockpiling early in a quarter and paying higher prices to do so.” According to the Coalition of American Metal Manufacturers, this very problem has already emerged with the U.S.-EU agreement: “some steel products’ quota filled up for the year in the first two weeks of January,” and so they now worry that the Japan deal will “lead to market manipulations and allow for gaming of the system that puts this country’s smallest manufacturers at an even further disadvantage.” Other concerns with the EU system, such as its “melted and poured” rule for qualifying products, are also present in the new Japan agreement.

So, for those who support free markets and the removal of U.S. trade barriers, the Biden administration basically took a bad trade deal and made it even worse.

Finally, the new Japan agreement once again shows the emptiness of the United States’ “national security” justifications for these tariffs — the term isn’t even mentioned in the official documentation — and of the Biden campaign’s promise to improve U.S. foreign policy and heal Trump‐​era tensions with major allies. As has been widely reported, the Japanese government sought the Section 232 tariffs’ complete removal, which President Biden could achieve with the stroke of a pen. They still don’t seem to be thrilled with this deal, but apparently figure that a little liberalization — and some sweet quota rents for Japanese steelmakers — is better than nothing. If fixing obvious and absurd Trump‐​era wrongs to critical regional allies were really more important to the White House than placating U.S. steel companies and unions, the president would have removed the tariffs entirely. He didn’t.

So much for national security.

Scott Lincicome is the director of general economics and Cato’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies.

To read the full commentary from the CATO Institute, please click here. 

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During the pandemic, globalization has also been blamed for putting the United States into a position of excessive dependence on foreign supplies as varied as medical equipment and semiconductors.

This has led many politicians — Democrats and Republicans — to a subject that was also for a long time a dirty term: industrial policy. They seek a bigger role for the U.S. government in shaping what gets made where. The idea has been championed by Presidents Donald Trump and Biden and members of Congress from conservatives like Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley to progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren.

But this enthusiasm for directing billions of dollars at certain industries may not work in today’s globalized economy. If the point is to focus on clearly defined and agreed-upon goals — including some that may involve sacrificing a bit of economic efficiency to achieve national security or pandemic preparedness — then an industrial policy that is entirely domestic may actually backfire.

Instead, to succeed, it will take what we think of as a hybrid industrial policy. This would integrate some of the good aspects of globalization, preserve competition and coordinate policy with like-minded countries to achieve common objectives.

A couple of examples suggest the opportunities — and potential pitfalls.

Personal protective equipment and semiconductors

The main argument for an American industrial policy in both P.P.E. and semiconductors is the risk that foreign sources of supply are too concentrated geographically.

For P.P.E., when the coronavirus hit, the lack of hospital gowns and masks globally — let alone in the United States — set off alarm bells among policymakers. There was extra global supply, but it was stuck mostly in China.

To remedy that, the Defense Department spent nearly $1.2 billion. Dozens of American companies now make N-95 respirators, surgical masks, hospital gowns and gloves, and even some of the key raw materials the supply chain needed to ensure production could be secured in the United States.

For semiconductors, no one seemed to care just over a year ago about U.S. dependence on high-end chips made in Taiwan and South Korea. But with the global shortage, we all do now — automakers in particular.

Both countries are geopolitical hot spots and not immune to droughts, typhoons and other natural disasters that can disrupt supply. Congress is using the situation to push ahead bipartisan legislation for upward of $50 billion in federal subsidies for the American semiconductor industry.

But the objective should not be national self-sufficiency at any cost. When the pandemic recedes, there will be less demand for some of these products, and prices will come down.

For P.P.E., that means budget-conscious hospitals will look to buy cheaper, non-American-produced bodog poker review options. The U.S. companies will want continuing subsidies or protection from imports. In fact, a group of small companies have already organized into the American Mask Manufacturer’s Association to complain that foreign-made masks are being “dumped” in the U.S. market, and they may seek tariffs to stop imports. But duties would raise costs for a health care system that is already extraordinarily expensive.

The industrial-policy goal should be to preserve the right amount of domestic capacity to be at the ready for the next health emergency with the equally important objective of keeping medical costs low. Targeted government subsidies, as well as regulations that medical distributors, states and hospital systems hold more emergency inventory than they did heading into the pandemic, would be better industrial policy than blunt trade restrictions and blank checks.

For semiconductors, congressional efforts to shift capacity to the United States through subsidies pose additional challenges. The potential good news is that the bulk of the subsidies might be one-time payments that provide equal opportunity to leading-edge manufacturers — not just American businesses but also some abroad, like Taiwan’s T.S.M.C. and South Korea’s Samsung. Yet there is no guarantee that the foreign companies would start making their leading-edge products on American soil. In fact, they are less likely to do so if Washington continues to adopt unilateral export-control policies that can limit where American-made semiconductors can be sold — i.e., not China.

And there are also downsides to bringing back production. The United States is not immune to geographically concentrated risks, as February’s Arctic storm in Texas revealed when a disruption to the electrical grid temporarily shuttered a cluster of semiconductor plants. And if the costs of chips made in America are too high for automakers, keeping those product lines going may require more than just those one-off payments to companies.

A better “Made in America”

For both economic and security reasons, more geographic diversification is needed. A better “Made in America” policy would allow for globalized production chains, particularly with trusted suppliers in like-minded countries.

This implies that, if the goal is to diversify away from China — or, for certain items like semiconductors, Taiwan or South Korea — the United States and its allies should take a coordinated approach. That requires setting limits on government payments to industry and working out who in the supply chain does what — a high level of policy cooperation.

Without such coordination, even like-minded countries might end up in bidding wars by giving ever larger subsidies to lure semiconductor manufacturers to their shores. That could result in industry excess capacity, trade disputes and tariffs that close off markets.

This is not a fanciful scenario. The United States and the European Union have long fought over counterproductive agricultural subsidies, and the two sides recently resolved a costly, long-running battle over subsidies to Boeing and Airbus that also included tariffs on completely unrelated goods, like wine and cheese.

Furthermore, at the same moment that the United States is working with the other major economies to eliminate tax havens and impose a global minimum tax on multinational corporations, governments should not be competing to hand tax revenue back to those companies some other way.

The Biden administration seems willing to try this coordinated approach. At the Group of 7 summit in June, the administration agreed to a proposal highlighting both P.P.E. and semiconductors that aspired to achieve “open, diversified, secure and resilient supply chains.” In a summit in September, the administration and the European Union agreed to try to avoid a semiconductor “subsidy race and the risk of crowding out private investments that would themselves contribute to our security and resilience.”

Cooperating on the details will prove hard. A hybrid industrial policy is extremely difficult to achieve, but it is also the one most likely to work. It accepts for security reasons some costs to moving some production away from where it is currently abroad but without requiring self-sufficiency and a complete unraveling of international production chains that give Americans access to the best products at reasonable prices. It accepts that some coordination with allies is necessary but seeks to avoid managed trade or government-protected cartels that reduce competition. In short, it relies on a sound economic strategy in the service of national security.

Chad P. Bown is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Douglas A. Irwin is an economics professor at Dartmouth.

To read the full commentary from The New York Times, please click here.

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China has been sending signals of interest in joining the trade agreement for a while, and at the last Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit meeting, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that China will “favorably consider joining” CPTPP. The formal accession bid is a masterful stroke for Chinese diplomacy, even if the intended outcome of membership is far from assured.

Entry into CPTPP would consolidate China’s economic integration drive, building from its joining the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) trade agreement; its state-sponsored Belt and Road Initiative; and the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The CPTPP would be a particularly valuable feather in China’s cap as champion of economic globalization. It would reverse the persistent narrative of economic decoupling, as China would appear more centrally integrated to the world economy with an ambitious trade agreement under its belt, whilst the United States looks from the outside in, marginalized from the CPTPP of its own volition.

Some observers feel good about the prospects of China acceding to CPTPP. They argue that China is closer to CPTPP standards than usually acknowledged, that the flexibilities built into the text of the agreement will enable China to join even in areas where domestic reform is hard, and that the existing CPTPP members have a strong interest in deepening trade and investment relations with an economic giant like China.

Such optimism may be misplaced, however. There is a wide gap between core CPTPP standards and China’s extant commitments in other trade agreements. The CPTPP has chapters on labor and state-owned enterprises mandating freedom of association, eliminating all forms of forced labor, and establishing disciplines on the commercial activities of public enterprises; RCEP does not. Both the CPTPP and RCEP contain a chapter on e-commerce, but the commitments undertaken are very different. It is not just that the digital provisions of the CPTPP go further (for example, forbidding forced disclosure of source code), but that they are subject to dispute settlement amongst the parties and do not invoke self-judging national security exemptions.

In assessing China’s readiness to play by the CPTPP rulebook, the direction of travel matters. Under Xi, China has moved further away from the spirit of the CPTPP on labor rights protection, a level-playing field for private enterprises, and freedom of data flows. Instead, China’s repression of Uyghurs, the heavy subsidization of high-tech industry, and its tightened data localization requirements under the new Data Security Law have been a source of concern for its trading partners — including many CPTPP members. Scale ought to be considered. Vietnam, a CPTPP founding member with heavy state presence in the economy, received several exemptions for its state-owned enterprises (SOE). However, China’s mammoth size is bound to make many CPTPP members wary of extending similar flexibilities. In fact, countries like Japan have been working with others to tighten World Trade Organization (WTO) subsidy rules with China in mind. An easy waiver for multiple Chinese SOEs appears unlikely.

It bears noting that 2021 is not 2001. If China were prepared to adopt far-reaching economic reforms like it did to win entry into the WTO, CPTPP membership could be a catalyst for positive change for both China and its relations with trading partners. Absent such strategic orientation towards a greater opening of the economy, a successful Chinese CPTPP bid brokered through broad exemptions could instead result in a watering down of the agreement’s standards. It is unlikely that many CPTPP parties would be inclined to see the weakening of the rules they fought hard to salvage, especially considering that in RCEP they have already an alternative trade platform to reap the benefits of greater economic exchange with China (six countries are presently members of both agreements). Turning CPTPP into a slightly stricter version of RCEP would be economic and strategic malpractice.

Politics will also weigh heavily in the final outcome. The CPTPP accession must clear a very high bar: unanimous consent of all active members. Eight countries have ratified the CPTPP (three signatories have not yet) and it will be up to them to determine whether Chinese accession negotiations receive a green light. Amongst them, Canada, Australia, and Japan have experienced significant recent tensions in their relations with China, respectively due to China’s arbitrary detention of its nationals, spats over the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Chinese intrusions into the waters of the Senkaku Islands administered by Japan. The politics of accession are not starting from a clean slate; they will be influenced by China’s ongoing economic coercion and the priority attached to economic security — with China in mind — by several CPTTP members.

The accession talks will also be influenced by Taiwan’s decision to follow on China’s heels and formally request entry into the CPTPP. The gap to close in meeting CPTPP standards is much narrower for Taiwan, and its semiconductor prowess makes an enticing case for membership in order to strengthen supply chains. But in this era of great power competition, the WTO accession model (with entry of China and Taiwan choreographed in sequence) will likely not hold. Geopolitics have descended full force into the CPTPP.

China’s confidence in seeking CPTPP membership, despite questions over its commitment to far-reaching reform and recent tensions with important members of the trade grouping, speaks volumes to American marginalization. In effect, it will be up to the middle and small powers in the CPTPP to uphold the trade and investment standards that the United States cares deeply about as they entertain the Chinese membership bid. This is where the Chinese diplomatic maneuver is most poignant: The U.S. has become a shadow to the center of action in regional economic integration.

In joining a mega trade agreement, heed must be paid to both the small print and the subtext. In other words, the nature of the trade and investment obligations and the climate of political and diplomatic relations loom large. Neither one points to a fast pass for China to enter the CPTPP. But this does not mean that China has erred in making this move.

Mireya Solís is director of the Center for East Asia Policy Studies, Philip Knight Chair in Japan Studies, and a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. Prior to her arrival at Brookings, Solís was a tenured associate professor at American University’s School of International Service.

To read the full commentary from Brookings, please click here.

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The USITC delivered an overall estimate that trade agreements have added very little to trade growth and therefore to economic growth. This finding may cheer protectionists and those who want trade agreements to pay less attention to trade barriers and more attention to social issues. But the USITC made two major mistakes. First, in analyzing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) enacted in 1993, which entered into effect in January 1994, the USITC failed to measure the growth in US-Mexico trade separately from growth in trade with Mexico and Canada together. Second, the commission omitted altogether China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, by far the biggest trade agreement of the 21st century, on the ground that accession is not a free trade agreement (FTA). Without these mistakes, the USITC report would have shown much more dramatic growth in trade resulting from liberalizing trade in the last three decades.

The report attributes, as of 2017, an increase of $89 billion in US exports to trade agreement partners and an increase of $118 billion in US imports from the partners—totaling $207 billion in two-way trade creation (all numbers are rounded). However, as a consequence of agreements, US exports of $52 billon and US imports of $22 billion were diverted from nonpartner countries, and these numbers were subtracted from the trade creation figures. Taking account of exports and imports diverted from nonpartners, the USITC estimated net two-way trade creation, as of 2017, at $133 billion. This estimate of net trade creation, in turn, drives the USITC estimate that there have been only incremental US GDP gains, employment impacts, and distributional effects.

To estimate trade creation, the USITC relied on a “state of the art” gravity model of bilateral merchandise trade flows, published by Baier, Yotov, and Zylkin. However, the way the model was applied did not take proper account of NAFTA and altogether omitted China’s accession to the WTO.

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NAFTA has been by far the most important free trade agreement the United States has undertaken in the last few decades. The USITC estimated that NAFTA lowered trade barriers between the United States and its two partners, Canada and Mexico, by 8.1 percentage points. The USITC report does not reveal a dollar figure for two-way US trade gains with its two partners resulting from that barrier reduction. However, NAFTA trade in 2017 was $1.075 trillion, some 74 percent of all two-way US trade with agreement partners ($1.450 trillion). Very likely, roughly 74 percent of the USITC’s trade creation estimate should be attributed to NAFTA—in other words, $153 billion (74 percent of $207 billion). The analysis in this blog, plus analysis cited in the USITC report from other scholars, suggests that this figure is far too small.

The USITC did not separately analyze the Canada-US FTA of 1989. However, that agreement essentially eliminated merchandise trade barriers between the US and Canada, with the exception of agriculture. The NAFTA of 1994 made very little change in US-Canada barriers (including no meaningful liberalization of agricultural trade). What NAFTA did was reduce US-Mexico barriers, particularly Mexican tariff and nontariff barriers. If the USITC had properly recognized this fact and estimated a percentage point reduction in US-Mexico barriers, the reported figure would have been much larger than 8.1 percentage points.

Figure 1 compares post-NAFTA growth of US-Mexican merchandise trade (expressed in current dollars) with the growth of US merchandise trade with six leading Latin American countries—Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela. Taken together, these six countries are good comparators to Mexico. As figure 1 shows, from pre-NAFTA to 2017, US-Mexican two-way merchandise trade expanded 6.8 times in current dollars, while US trade with the six increased only 3.7 times. Of course, other forces were at play besides NAFTA, including subsequent US trade agreements with Chile (2004), Peru (2009), and Colombia (2012). But if US-Mexico trade had grown only as fast as US trade with the six, in 2017 US-Mexico two-way trade would have been $306 billion, rather than $559 billion—a difference of $253 billion. A difference of this magnitude between hypothetical and actual US-Mexico trade calls into question the USITC’s estimate of trade creation of just $207 billion from all trade agreements.

The estimates of other NAFTA scholars cited in the USITC report, without refutation, reinforce a skeptical attitude. Heo and Doanh (2020) estimated that, between 1989 and 2016, NAFTA enlarged trilateral trade by 58.2 percent. The overwhelming share of trilateral trade was between the US and Mexico, on the one hand, and between the US and Canada, on the other, with rather little between the Mexico and Canada. The USITC reports that US two-way trade with its two partners was $1.075 trillion in 2017. If NAFTA increased this trade by 58.2 percent, the implication is that NAFTA increased US two-way trade with Mexico and Canada from $680 billion to $1.075 trillion, an increment of $395 billion.

Continuing in this vein, the ITC cites Zylkin (2016), who estimated that NAFTA increased aggregate trade by 78.6 percent, compared with 37.6 percent for all other FTAs. Later, Baier, Yotov, and Zylkin (2019)—the same article referenced by the USITC for its gravity model—estimated that NAFTA increased aggregate trade by 93.9 percent, in other words almost a doubling. These NAFTA estimates by other scholars, like the figures in this blog, cannot be easily reconciled with the USITC’s estimate of trade creation from all trade agreements of just $207 billion in 2017.

CHINA TRADE CREATION

While the USITC report’s title is Economic Impact of Trade Agreements, the most important trade agreement of the 21st century is omitted from the report, namely China’s accession to the WTO in 2001. The central protagonists in this landmark event were the United States and China. True, critics of WTO accession cite evidence that it led to lost US jobs along with economic gains, but opponents and proponents of Chinese accession both recognize the event as an enormously important trade agreement. Yet trade creation between the United States and China makes no appearance in the USITC report.

Figure 2 makes a start at rectifying the omission. From pre-WTO accession to 2017, US-China two-way merchandise trade expanded 5.65 times in current dollars, while US trade with the rest of world increased only 1.75 times. Again, other forces were at play, most notably the transformation of the Chinese economy (owing in part to WTO accession). However, if US-China trade had grown only as fast as US trade with the rest of the world, in 2017 US-China two-way merchandise trade would have been $203 billion, rather than $656 billion—a difference of $453 billion. Put another way, this counterfactual exercise suggests that, if Chinese accession were properly recorded as a trade agreement, the USITC’s report might suggest US-China trade creation approaching $453 billion, plus whatever trade creation could be attributed to NAFTA and all other US trade agreements.

CONCLUSION

Without subscribing to a precise number for trade created by US trade agreements since 1984, it is clear that the USITC seriously underestimated the annual gains, as of 2017, that can be fairly attributed to US trade diplomacy. In turn, US GDP gains and distributional impacts of expanded trade are badly undercounted. Those who oppose globalization may take heart in the USITC’s modest estimates. But those who support globalization as an engine of economic welfare, both in the US and abroad, should not accept the small payoff implied by the USITC report.

Gary Clyde Hufbauer, nonresident senior fellow, was the Institute’s Reginald Jones Senior Fellow from 1992 to January 2018. He was previously the Maurice Greenberg Chair and Director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (1996–98), and has written extensively on international trade, investment, and tax issues.

To read the original commentary from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, please visit here

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Below, experts from Brookings’s Foreign Policy program describe what they are watching for, in terms of potential policy outcomes, developments in key relationships, and opportunities and things that could go wrong.

Biden has made it excessively clear that he seeks “stable and predictable” relations with Russia, and Putin can promise to restrain Russian hackers and to spare Ukraine another bout of military pressure. As a counter-claim, he can demand that no new waves of protests be allowed to topple the dictatorship in Belarus. Putin’s main message will inevitably be about the unacceptability of Western “interference” in Russian internal affairs, which means that his siloviki will keep persecuting the opposition and exterminating free media as they see fit. Biden cannot consent to that but an implicit “understanding” might emerge. The problem with establishing such boundaries of “stability” is greater than just damaging Biden’s agenda of strengthening democracy. Putin is predictable only in his desire to keep the initiative in his confrontation with the West, so he is apt to strike at the first opportune moment.

Célia Belin, Visiting Fellow, Center on the United States and Europe:

Although it is not yet on the formal agenda of the different summits, I will be watching for developments on trans-Atlantic travel. To this day, travel is still heavily restricted between the United States and Europe (specifically the Schengen area, United Kingdom, and Ireland), a 15-month purgatory with no end in sight. However, by the end of June, all 27 EU member states will have reopened their borders to American travelers — safety protocols varying with each country. Meanwhile, the Biden administration has yet to give any indication that it intends to reciprocate, or even to fix the dramatic visa backlog in its consulates in Europe. I will be looking at whether Europeans bring up the issue and the administration offers a path forward. As both sides are determined to identify a positive agenda out of President Biden’s Europe tour, the asymmetry created by the ongoing U.S. travel ban will be noticed. As Biden claims to be a “committed trans-Atlanticist,” relaxing rules for European travel would be a demonstration of trust and goodwill.

A larger question looms over the sequence: Can the G-7, and trans-Atlantic partners, regain a central role in designing global governance, and overcome nationalistic impulses? I will look at efforts towards building a sustainable recovery with new rules on corporate taxation. I also expect G-7 partners to demonstrate solidarity with the developing world, with progress on the number of vaccines being donated, efforts on debt relief, and increased pledges for climate finance.

James Goldgeier, Robert Bosch Senior Visiting Fellow, Center on the United States and Europe:

President Biden will go into his summit with President Putin in a strong position, having just come from a NATO summit that will emphasize the close alliance among the United States, Canada, and Europe. While both presidents have talked about the importance of strategic stability and arms control, fundamental divisions remain. Biden often discusses the importance of democracy, which Putin fears, and Biden continues to reiterate American support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, which Putin views as part of Russia’s privileged sphere of influence. Expect Putin to air his grievances against the United States, which he uses to try to deflect his responsibility for Russia’s continued economic stagnation. Biden, meanwhile, will do what his predecessor did not: make clear that continued Russian interference in American elections is unacceptable.

The days of U.S.-Russia summits with long fact sheets touting various agreements and initiatives are ancient history, but the two countries could pay lip service to their desire to cooperate on issues like the Arctic, Iran, and climate change. Biden has repeatedly stated his desire for a stable and predictable (i.e., boring) U.S.-Russia relationship that will enable the United States to keep its focus on China, and that seems to be the reason he offered the summit in the first place. Putin’s domestic challenges have led him to take a more aggressive foreign policy stance, so Biden’s hopes for quiet on the Russia front are likely to remain unfulfilled.

Samantha Gross, Fellow and Director, Energy Security and Climate Initiative:

The United Kingdom is hosting both the G-7 this week and the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) meeting in Glasgow in early November, two key meetings in this crucial year for climate action. London is keen to have the G-7 set the tone for a successful COP26.

The G-7 environment ministers met in May and made important commitments on climate, including setting goals in line with limiting global average temperature rise to 1.5°C, preserving 30% of land for nature by 2030, and eliminating funding for coal plants by the end of 2021. The coal decision was a particularly big step for Japan, which has been an important funder of coal plants abroad. At the summit, G-7 countries are likely to call for similar commitments from G-20 countries at their October summit in Rome.

Climate finance and trade are likely to be important issues at the summit. Many developing countries have climate goals that are conditional on financial aid, so success at the COP depends on greater commitment of funds from wealthy countries. The intersection of climate and trade is also a good fit for discussion at the G-7. The European Union plans to implement a carbon border adjustment mechanism to protect industries that pay Europe’s high carbon prices, but its implications for trade are complicated and untested. Working thorough the implications and ensuring that trade doesn’t become a stumbling block is an important task that the G-7 could take on.

Syaru Shirley Lin, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Center for East Asia Policy Studies:

The COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us that those who once seemed safe may not remain so, and that no one is safe until the whole world is. Democracies like Australia, New Zealand, and Taiwan displayed stellar performance in fighting the pandemic early on, maintaining nearly normal life with low infections and few deaths. However, from India to Japan, among both rich and poor economies, Asia is now ravaged by new variants, revealing inadequate testing, insufficient vaccine production and procurement, and lax quarantines, compared with China’s successful management of the pandemic through massive testing and strict lockdowns.

The pandemic has also highlighted how many national governments and international organizations were unprepared to respond quickly and effectively. Fortunately, innovative public-private partnerships such as COVAX, Gavi, and Reform for Resilience are filling in the gap both to end the pandemic and to prepare for the next one. As the chair of Reform for Resilience’s Asia-Pacific hub, I see how Asian countries are depending on the G-7 to donate vaccines immediately and then to enlarge contract manufacturing of vaccines in Asia.

President Biden’s trip is an opportunity for the U.S. and G-7 to develop a new mechanism that unites democratic governments with research institutions and the private sector to end this pandemic. This is a wake-up call for the G-7 to create more robust healthcare systems, resilient economies, and sustainable environments, all of which will prepare us better for the next pandemic, whose arrival is only a matter of time.

Suzanne Maloney, Vice President and Director, Foreign Policy:

As President Biden embarks on his first foreign trip, he has set an ambitious agenda — rebuilding America’s relationships with its closest allies and rallying the world’s democracies around a common goal of thwarting the implicit and explicit creep of authoritarianism. It is a noble aim, and a necessary endeavor, but neither a frenzy of summitry nor soaring rhetoric are the best means to achieve it.

After the epic disruption of Trump-era policies, Washington’s European allies will welcome the reassurance with a skeptical eye. Biden’s readiness to reengage must overcome not just the scars of the past four years, but also the continuing questions about the health of America’s own democracy as well as traditional resistance to any sense of a domineering Washington. And while our shared values and interests underpin the relationship, there is — and always has been — some divergence among our allies about how to advance them.

The good news is that this administration is well-suited to meet the needs of the moment. Biden himself has more foreign policy experience than any of his recent predecessors, and his track record is one of realism, not overreach. Moreover, he has spent the first five months of his presidency demonstrating America’s capacity for steady competence on the home front by marshaling the resources of the federal government to turn the tide against the historic challenge of the coronavirus pandemic. His administration should prioritize the same approach — consistency and efficacy — in addressing the systemic challenge posed by authoritarian great powers.

Michael O’Hanlon, Senior Fellow and Co-Director, Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology:

When President Biden meets President Putin in Geneva on June 16, he needs a big idea for future European security. Meeting for its own sake may be useful but only marginally. We need a strategy and a vision.

Specifically, it is time to rethink NATO’s standing desire to push the alliance further east — a policy virtually guaranteed to continue to produce a higher state of tension and greater risk of war than would otherwise characterize the West’s relationship with Russia. A new security architecture should seek to reverse verifiably Russia’s aggressions against its neighbors while creating a non-aligned zone among those eastern European countries not currently in NATO.

NATO was not created, and should not now be used, in an attempt to solve every European political or security problem. Nor was its original intent to expand. It started with just 12 members. It only added four in the course of the next 40 years — Germany, Turkey, Greece, and Spain. The goal was never growth for growth’s sake. Nor was NATO seen primarily as a tool for democracy promotion.

Moreover, the practical effect of attempting to enlarge NATO into these countries has arguably been to set back Russian relations with the West enormously. To be sure, the main fault is with Russia’s behavior; NATO should not apologize for past expansion. But the idea of further NATO expansion is the main policy that the West can and should rethink.

Patrick W. Quirk, Nonresident Fellow, Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology:

We are beginning to see the silhouette of the Biden administration’s democracy agenda, as the White House translates the president’s rhetorical commitment to prioritize supporting democracy and human rights in U.S. foreign policy into action. Last week, for example, the U.S. released a National Security Study Memorandum designating fighting corruption abroad as a core national security interest.

A key question going into the G-7 meeting is not whether the group will commit to supporting democracy abroad (they already have) but what they will promise to do together to achieve this goal.

The G-7 members are expected to codify a global minimum corporate tax rate. Can we expect something of similar ambition from the group’s discussion on “championing shared values including democracy and human rights”? One would hope so since whether democracy or autocracy predominates globally is more important than the percentage of profits which corporations hand over.

Commitments on how the seven — in concert with like-minded democracies, perhaps led by the D-10 including invited G-7 guests India, Australia, and South Korea — will protect and promote democracy would be welcome. They might commit to increasing support for strengthening institutions and civil society in fledgling democracies so that citizens instead of predatory elites thrive. They might also outline how allies will help protect democracy from Chinese and Russian malign influence, via standard repercussions and more proactive steps to shore up vulnerable countries.

This week will give greater shape to how the White House intends to translate promises on democracy into tangible action.

Douglas A. Rediker, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Center on the United States and Europe:

When President Biden meets his G-7 counterparts this week, the meeting will be heavy on signaling that the G-7 is back. In 2009, as the global financial crisis raged, it was the G-20, not the G-7 (G-8 at the time) where leaders and finance officials successfully signaled that even countries with different ideologies and political systems could work together for the common good. The larger G-20 grouping effectively eclipsed the G-7 in the following decade, but though its agenda expanded, the results delivered did not.

This week’s G-7 will also include Australia, India, and South Korea, signaling that the G-7 is now the principal forum where multilateral approaches to global issues will be hashed out among countries sharing democratic values, in hopes of making tangible progress in tackling current crises like COVID-19 response and climate. By reenergizing the G-7, the British hosts, Biden, and other attendees are signaling that when the wider G-20 meets, coordinated positions will have already been agreed, effectively presenting other G-20 countries, including China and Russia, with what is effectively a fait accompli. China has already reacted, arguing that “the G7 has no right to and should not exclude developing countries or other platforms for multilateral governance.”

This week’s G-7 is another reflection of the Biden administration’s framing of the world into democracies and autocracies. It could also signal that what is left of the halcyon era of efforts at global cooperation is over, and with it, the primacy of the G-20.

Constanze Stelzenmüller, Fritz Stern Chair on Germany and Trans-Atlantic Relations, Center on the United States and Europe:

The weekend’s historic G-7 agreement on global corporate tax rates could be a gamechanger for the trans-Atlantic trade relationship; German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, the Social Democrats’ chancellor candidate, is already celebrating it as a victory. Are U.S.-German relations back on track after all?

Not quite. It is notable that the Biden administration faced down a heavy bipartisan drumbeat for sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in May for the sake of improving relations with Germany — yet the president is about to spend a week in Europe without going to Berlin.

Meanwhile, President Putin has casually upended a key argument fielded by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to defend the project. Under an agreement negotiated by Berlin with the Kremlin, Russia was supposed to maintain its Ukrainian gas transit route until 2024. Yet on Friday Putin told a conference that Ukraine would have to show “good will” if it wanted to keep the transit route: a public slap in the face for Germany.

Much is at stake for Germany in this week’s summits — not least whether the successor to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (whose term ends in 2022) might be German; the name of Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who is popular among her peers, was floated this week. So it might be time for Berlin to take a hard look at the relative strategic value of its relationships with the U.S. and Russia. One potential outcome could be to reconsider its opposition to a moratorium on the pipeline.

Thomas Wright, Director, Center on the United States and Europe:

The White House sees President Biden’s forthcoming trip to Europe as a demonstration that “America is back” after four years of President Donald Trump. There is a considerable risk that this message will fall flat. There is little appetite on either side of the Atlantic for a return to the Obama administration’s Europe policy. Europeans follow American politics and understand that Trumpism is not dead and could make a comeback in elections in 2022 or 2024. Meanwhile, as Jeremy Shapiro recently argued, many Biden administration officials are skeptical that Europe can or will do much to help the United States in its competition with China.

Biden is unique among American presidents in his long-established engagement with and affinity for the Atlantic alliance. He should use this trip to set out his vision for how that alliance should change in decades to come. This must include serious consideration of helping the EU become more autonomous and capable, fleshing out an economic agenda for the alliance, showing how the U.S. can help support liberal democracy in Europe, rethinking NATO’s 2% of GDP defense spending metric so it is better suited for an era of competition with China, and encouraging continuing security cooperation between the U.K. and EU. Going big would ensure Europe is more resilient to a return of Trumpism, and better positioned to compete with China for its own reasons. But this is unlikely to happen on this trip, so it will probably have to wait a while longer.

Pavel Baev is a nonresident senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings and a research professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)

Célia Belin is a visiting fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings. Her areas of expertise include trans-Atlantic relations, U.S. foreign policy toward Europe, French politics and foreign policy, the role of civil society in foreign policy, religion/secularism, and strategic prospective analysis.

James Goldgeier is a Robert Bosch senior visiting fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution and a professor of international relations at the School of International Service at American University, where he served as dean from 2011-17.

Samantha Gross is a fellow and director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative. Her work is focused on the intersection of energy, environment, and policy, including climate policy and international cooperation, energy efficiency, unconventional oil and gas development, regional and global natural gas trade, and the energy-water nexus.

Syaru Shirley Lin is a nonresident senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings and Compton Visiting Professor in World Politics at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

Suzanne Maloney is the vice president and director of the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, where her research focuses on Iran and Persian Gulf energy. She has served as the deputy director of the Foreign Policy for the past five years.

Michael O’Hanlon is a senior fellow, and director of research, in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution, where he specializes in U.S. defense strategy, the use of military force, and American national security policy.

Patrick W. Quirk is senior director of the Center for Global Impact at the International Republican Institute (IRI) and a nonresident fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. Previously, he served on the U.S. Secretary of State’s Policy Planning (S/P) staff in the Department of State as the lead advisor for fragile states, conflict and stabilization, and foreign assistance.

Douglas A. Rediker is a nonresident senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings, as well as in the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program. He is also the founding partner of International Capital Strategies, LLC, a Washington, DC-based political economy consultancy founded in 2012 and a member of the board of directors of Cowen Inc

Constanze Stelzenmüller is an expert on German, European, and trans-Atlantic foreign and security policy and strategy. She is the inaugural holder of the Fritz Stern Chair on Germany and trans-Atlantic Relations in the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings.

Thomas Wright is the director of the Center on the United States and Europe and a senior fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution. He is also a contributing writer for The Atlantic and a nonresident fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy

To read the full commentary from the Brookings Institute, please click here.

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