At the moment, the Trumpian trade war appears to be on. It seems to me that this might be a good time to write down a brief, non-scholarly primer on how the trading system – and U.S. trade policy within that system – work. The key thing you need to understand about trade policy is that the Econ 101 case for free trade plays very little role in actual policy, certainly in trade negotiations. (In fairness, there’s an academic literature arguing that the underlying economics matter more than I’m suggesting, work that I consider admirable but unpersuasive.) But the process by which trade liberalization was sought was all about political realism rather than abstract ideals.

Source: New York Times June 03, 2018 18:11 UTC