Will global trade fall victim to trump’s whims

Will global trade fall victim to trump’s whims

After months of incessant (लगातार/निरंतर) threats and belligerent (लड़ाकू) postures, he will be finally anointed (अभिषेक करना/किसी पद पर आसन्न होना) today as the 45th President of the United States. Donald Trump, who will be president of the world’s largest economy for the next four years, has already become a byword for turmoil (हलचल) and chaos in a fragile (कमजोर/नाजुक) global order. By threatening to raise border walls and trade barriers to make America great again, Trump has unleashed panic and turbulence in major international capitals.
But Trump’s public liaison (communication or cooperation which facilitates a close working relationship between people or organizations.) official Anthony Scaramucci told participants at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos on 17 January that Trump remains committed to free trade. The new US president wants to ensure that trade deals are “symmetrical” and not tilted against US interests, he said. “Every single trade deal that the US has (entered) since 1945 were these asymmetrical deals. Because we were trying to help countries improve their living standards,” Scaramucci said. “We call those agreements free trade but they were free asymmetrically. So all we’re asking for now is to create more symmetry in these trade agreements.”
Such is the false narrative advanced by Trump and his acolytes(सहयोगी) . All trade agreements since the establishment of GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) in 1948 and the Uruguay Round of negotiations that led to the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 contained rules specifically to suit the interests of the US and other dominant members. The US remained first among equals in setting the global trading framework.
Last week, trade envoys held luncheon (a formal lunch, or a formal word for lunch.) meetings to assess the likely disruption that Trump would cause in the so-called rules-based multilateral trading system. Before proceeding to Davos, the trade envoys pondered (विचार करना/सोचना) over the likely havoc (तबाह करना/ तहस नहस) that Trump would cause if he pressed ahead with all his Twitter threats. They felt their major challenge is to “preserve” the existing WTO-based trading framework. Surprisingly, WTO chief Roberto Azevedo has maintained silence on Trump’s protectionist and anti-trade rhetoric. Azevedo, who was praised by the outgoing US trade representative Michael Froman for his leadership at the last WTO ministerial meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2015, issues reports regularly on the dangers posed by protectionism.
Trump has made it unmistakably clear that he is not going to pursue the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiated under his predecessor (पूर्ववर्ती) Barack Obama. The fate of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership hangs in the balance. In all probability, it will go into cold storage. Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on imports ranging from cars made in Mexico to Chinese products have already caused tremors (स्पंदन/हलचल) in the global trading system. Trump also castigated (आलोचना करना/तिरस्कार करना) the WTO last year.
The America-first–in-global-trade-liberalization slogan of Trump is bound to generate retaliatory measures and imitation by trading partners of the US. Froman, in an interview to Fareed Zakaria on CNN on 15 January, suggested that Trump’s trade policies will have an adverse impact on US trade ties with China and India.
Trump’s nominee for managing his trade policy is ambassador Robert Lighthizer, who had served during the Reagan era. Lighthizer is a votary of regulated/managed trade and voluntary export restraints (VERs, or restrictions on the quantity of goods that a country is allowed to export to another country). The Uruguay Round of negotiations, which began in 1986 and concluded in December 1993, did away with managed trade and VERs.
In short, Trump, going by his consistent and unstoppable vituperative (निंदात्मक/अपमानपूर्वक) tweets, could cause mayhem (अशांति/खलबली) in the global trading system. “Make no mistake: Mr Trump could bring down the temple of world trade,” journalist Martin Wolf argued in his article ‘Does Trump’s rise mark the end of Davos Man’s influence?’ in the Financial Times on 17 January.
Little wonder that the trade envoys of major industrialized countries seem unable to comprehend the magnitude of Trump-induced travails (engage in painful or laborious effort.) in the global trading system. “It’s unpredictable or at least more unpredictable than usual,” says Crawford Falconer, an international authority on global trade negotiations and jurisprudence.
“It’s no great insight to expect an increase in the intensity of trade litigation over the WTO status of existing measures, particularly with China. Mind you, that has stepped up even in the latter days of the Obama administration—but chances are that will go up in intensity. And that goes broader than just US-China.”
The big issue, according to Falconer, who spoke to Mint on 17 January, “is whether we are up for something more significant than that up to and including trade war(s). Nafta (North American Free Trade Agreement) is already clearly under pressure. There is plenty of collateral in statements made for the US being considerably more aggressive than that. Others claim that calmer heads will prevail. At the very least there is more uncertainty than for a long time about the possibility of significant new trade and investment-restrictive measures from the US.”