Send Link mailing list submissions to
[email protected]
To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
https://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
[email protected]
You can reach the person managing the list at
[email protected]
When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Link digest..."
Today's Topics:
1. Tarrifs for everyone (Stephen Loosley)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2025 23:28:54 +1030
From: Stephen Loosley <[email protected]>
To: "link" <[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] Tarrifs for everyone
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Another perspective on Trump's tariffs?
"Outside In | Real threat posed by Trump?s tariffs worse than a global
recession"
The US president cannot be allowed to replace world?s hard-won multilateral
compromise and cooperation with bullying bilateralism
United States / World Opinion : By David Dodwell (Published: 4th April 2025)
https://www.scmp.com/opinion/world-opinion/article/3305104/real-threat-posed-trumps-tariffs-worse-global-recession
Whatever the megalomaniac hubris of US President Donald Trump in imagining his
administration can bring the world?s economies to heel in his quest to ?Make
America Great Again?, the reality is the outcome of this tariff madness will
depend not on Trump, but on how the world responds.
It will depend on whether the world recognises that the primary threat is not
the potential for a tariff war to trigger a global recession and where the
worst of this will fall, though this would be threat enough.
Rather, it is whether Trump succeeds in demolishing the fabric of the
multilateral compromise and cooperation that have driven economic development
and poverty reduction over the past seven decades, replacing it with a pattern
of bullying bilateralism.
This might suit the US, as the world?s largest economy, but would be
catastrophic for most of the rest of the world.
As Alan Wolff, former World Trade Organization deputy head and now a fellow at
the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics, argues,
with the US accounting for just 9 per cent of the global goods trade, the
future of rules-based trade primarily depends on the rest of the world.
Simon Evenett and colleagues at the Lausanne-based International Institute for
Management Development have argued that with the exception of a tiny group
existentially reliant on the US (mainly Canada and Mexico), even in a
worst-case tariff war, most economies could, if necessary, replace virtually
all of their US trade with statistically modest growth in trade with other
countries.
Trump slaps 34% (+20% earlier) reciprocal tariffs on Chinese imports as part of
?Liberation Day? package
Even though the US was the world?s largest single importer in 2022 (importing
goods worth US$3.13 trillion), ignoring other leading importers like China or
Germany, the 233 economies that make up the rest of the world?s import markets
accounted for US$16.6 trillion ? five times the size of US imports.
The crux is whether governments get divided, bullied and browbeaten into
bilateral haggles with the Trump administration, or stick together in support
of multilaterally agreed rules of trade.
Even if the US sticks aggressively to its divide-and-rule strategy, so long as
other economies stand together, the harm inflicted by a US trade war would be
limited. ?America first? would become ?America alone? as other economies reduce
their reliance on the US market and focus instead on building trading relations
with countries that have a healthier respect for the cooperation, compromise
and coordination intrinsic to multilateralism.
Trump and other recent US administrations have talked about the importance of
remaining committed to the ?international rules-based order?, and I?m sure
somewhere, buried deep down, in the chaos of the past 10 weeks there remain
many in the US administration who claim to retain such a commitment.
But it is important to emphasise that when US officials talk of a rules-based
order, they are light years away from supporting the principles of compromise
and cooperation at the heart of multilateralism. Rather, they are talking about
a world in which the rules are drafted, endorsed and enforced by the US.
(Trump won?t let Europe turn Uncle Sam into ?Uncle Sucker?, US defence chief
says)
As such, much of the US discontent with the alleged erosion of the rules-based
order is that others have increasingly sought to play a role in drawing up the
rules. As Stewart Patrick, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, noted in a recent commentary: ?Traditionally, globally
dominant powers have been reluctant to accept significant constraints on their
freedom of action.?
Unlike small economies that lack bilateral clout, relying heavily on the
compromise and cooperation at the heart of multilateral agreements, economic
giants like the US are strongly tempted to prefer the unilateral and bilateral
options open to them. As a result, the US has been ambivalent and selective in
its engagement in, or support of, multilateralism.
This was vividly illustrated in a recently released index of countries? support
for UN-based multilateralism, which revealed the US has ratified only around 60
per cent of major UN treaties, has since 2018 voted with the majority in the UN
General Assembly less than 25 per cent of the time, and introduced nearly 180
?unilateral coercive measures? since 2010 ? over three times more than any
other UN member.
As a result, out of 193 countries ranked for their support for multilateralism,
the US came in last ? below Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea.
(Trump stops US engagement with UN Human Rights Council and Palestinian relief
agency)
As the study suggests, when the US talks of a rules-based order it refers to
?the set of behaviours or rules favoured by the United States and its allies?,
rather than multilateral compromise and cooperation. It explains why the new US
administration has embarked on a 180-day review of whether it should support or
withdraw from all international organisations, conventions and treaties ?
including the United Nations and WTO.
Countries scrambling to work out how to respond to Trump?s tariff agenda
therefore need to recognise the threat is about more than trade. It is about
whether multilateral cooperation is going to be forced to yield to bullying
bilateralism.
As the Carnegie Endowment?s Patrick put it: ?This
?stop-the-world-I-want-to-get-off? mindset is based on the fantastical
assumption that the United States can replicate the capacities of multilateral
organizations and the global public goods they provide.?
The priority for governments (and business organisations) must be to resist
Trump?s siren calls for bilateral arm-wrestling, and instead meet urgently to
agree on a common response, not just on trade, but on all those other global
challenges (such as climate change and the threat of pandemics) none of us can
resolve alone.
The imperative is to respond using global (multilaterally agreed) rules, and to
refuse to allow might to become right.
David Dodwell is CEO of the trade policy and international relations
consultancy Strategic Access, focused on developments and challenges facing the
Asia-Pacific over the past four decades.
------------------------------
Subject: Digest Footer
_______________________________________________
Link mailing list
[email protected]
https://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
------------------------------
End of Link Digest, Vol 389, Issue 4
************************************
