This post was originally published on this site.
Almost weekly the White House issues both executive orders and email traffic on trade matters. In my decades of working in international commerce, I’ve never seen public policy move at such a breakneck speed. But my experience tells me that the trade strategies being implemented by the current administration are well crafted to solidify our global dominance while keeping rogue players in check.
This opinion is by no means partisan. President Barack Obama accomplished much to benefit the U.S. in the trade arena as did the previous administrations of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
But our trade agenda lost ground under President Joe Biden. At that time, Washington was focused squarely on global warming, diversity and kumbaya-esque foreign relations. Those are admirable goals, but not what America’s trade specialists are trained for. Our seasoned trade professionals are now back doing what they’re trained to do.
The Trump White House is looking at trade through an “America First” lens. This aggressive trade stance is warranted given the substantially higher export tariffs that our trade partners make us pay versus what we charge on their imports to the U.S.
The White House has taken notice that for the past two decades our friends in the European Union have engaged in a divide-and-conquer strategy to trade and it’s worked well. They approached it on a sectoral level (critical minerals, digital trade) followed by country-by-country free trade agreements. They’ve been outpacing us. The U.S. is now following the European playbook and it’s working.
Today the U.S. is forging free trade agreements (now coined as Economic Partnerships to skirt Congressional oversight) with dozens of countries or regions ranging from the UK to the EU to Latin America to Kenya and the ASEAN Southeast Asian trade bloc. Plus, there are numerous sectoral agreements in the works, such as free trade in digital services.
The trade community is unaccustomed to Washington’s brazen and unpredictable approach to trade, but the strategy is mostly working.
JERRY HINGLE
president, International Trade Associates