Brexit’s Advance Opens a New Trade Era

President Trump has put stock in the unrivaled scale of the American economy in seeking favorable trading arrangements. In his calculus, the United States boasts the advantage in any bilateral trade negotiations and can tilt the rules toward American interests.

This was the logic that prompted Mr. Trump to renounce American participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade bloc spanning a dozen countries. It was a project pursued by his immediate predecessor, President Barack Obama, in part to press China to address longstanding complaints that it subsidized key industries, doled out credit to favored companies and manipulated the value of its currency to gain advantage in world markets.

In taking on China, the Obama administration employed the multilateralist mind-set that had guided American policy since the end of World War II. The Pacific trading bloc would set rules on investment, labor and environmental standards. Its members would profit through growing trade, and China would want in. To gain access, China would be forced to adopt the bloc’s rules.

But in Trumpian thinking, multilateralism is for suckers. Shortly after he was sworn in, declaring as his credo “America First,” Mr. Trump ditched the Pacific bloc and weaponized the American market: If China wanted access to the 327 million consumers in the richest country on earth, it would have to buy more American goods and play fair.

On Friday, Mr. Trump cited the preliminary agreement as evidence that his strategy was working. The United States would sharply reduce the tariffs it had affixed to Chinese goods, while China promised to buy more American farm products and respect intellectual property. Mr. Trump called it “an amazing deal for all.”

But economists said the announcement of new farm purchases reflected goods that China was already buying. Even as the scrapping of the next wave of tariffs weighed as positive for the global economy, few were proclaiming the advent of enduring peace. The United States and China have descended into such an adversarial state that they are likely to continue seeking alternatives to exchanging goods and investment. Companies that make goods in China will face pressure to explore other countries, posing disruption to the global supply chain.

China’s leaders have come to construe trade hostilities as part of an American bullying campaign engineered to suppress their national aspirations and deny the country its rightful place as a superpower. Nationalist sentiments and security concerns have become intertwined with trade policy, complicating the pursuit of a final deal.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/13/business/economy/uk-election-brexit-trade.html?emc=rss&partner=rss