Introduction
The Trump Administration has engineered one of the most consequential shifts in U.S. trade policy since World War II. For more than seven decades, Washington has played the role of the global free trade system’s chief architect, championing multilateral institutions such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and its successor, the World Trade Organization (WTO), while steadily lowering barriers to goods and services as a matter of both economic conviction and geopolitical strategy. The underlying belief was that a rule-bound, liberal trading order would generate prosperity, reinforce alliances, and entrench U.S. leadership in global governance. The historic levels of economic riches and prosperity were supposed to pull millions out of poverty while bringing nations ever closer through friendly trade relations. While this was largely achieved in Europe and elsewhere, China emerged as the greatest benefactor of free trade by building an export-oriented economy. As China and others have increased their share in international trade, the U.S. has become more suspicious of the benefits of the system it built, complaining about free riders and the burdens of global leadership.
The foundations of the international trade system, however, have not led to the political liberalism around the world as was promised by the proponents of free trade. Neither did they ensure American dominance in the long run. Instead, jobs have been shipped abroad, and the socio-economic consequences of deindustrialization in the U.S. have remained unaddressed. As America moved rapidly toward a service economy, much of the manufacturing infrastructure went offshore, leaving millions of blue-collar workers either out of work or out of the labor market. As the 2008 financial crisis showed, the lower middle classes were vulnerable in times of global economic stress, and the federal government had no solutions other than bailing out large corporations in the name of preventing a larger crisis. The “too big to fail” motto deepened the economic disillusionment of the masses, and the promise of the American dream appeared ever more beyond reach for millions. While Wall Street continued to promote U.S.-led economic globalization, it became anathema to the aspirations of the main streets.
