The US hegemony and multilateral trading system
The ugly dance of the global hegemon continues to cause considerable turmoil in the multilateral trading system. Liberal pundits of the establishment, including the voice of the liberal trade order The Economist, described Trump’s actions as a “threat to world trade” and “the rules-based system”. “For the first time in decades,” it says in a leader on 10 March, the biggest foe of free traders “is the man in the Oval Office.” Despite the continued brouhaha over Trump’s national security-driven safeguard actions, ostensibly for building robust domestic steel and aluminium industries, there was a quiet meeting of the EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom, Japan’s trade and industry minister Hiroshige Seko and the US trade representative Robert Lighthizer in Brussels on 10 March. One day the EU, Japan, Canada, and even China, threaten retaliatory trade measures against Washington’s unilateral and illegal actions; the following day, the EU and Japan join hands with the US to launch collective action against China. So, today when the god of the liberal trade order is resorting to unusual measures such as the Section 232 national security-driven safeguard actions, the WTO Secretariat is clueless.
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