Trump’s Trade Endgame Could Be the Undoing of Global Rules
rules, which include a tariff ceiling of 3.5 percent, on average, for Mexican
exports to the United States and 7.1 percent for American exports to Mexico.
According to a trade diplomat who is aware of the goings-on, American negotiators have warned Mexicans and Canadians
that if the United States leaves Nafta, they shouldn’t expect trade relations to simply snap back to W. T.O.
Mr. Lighthizer might remember that after Canada, Japan
and the European Community agreed in the early 1980s to voluntary restraint agreements limiting exports of steel to the United States, producers in countries like South Korea and South Africa simply picked up the slack.
What’s most mystifying to foreign diplomats and trade policy experts is how the Trump administration conceives
the endgame of bringing down a legal system the United States spent so much time and effort to build.
Today the United States accounts for only about 13 percent of world trade, down from almost a quarter in the 1980s.
in 1995, argues that whatever the legalities, the thought that Mr. Trump may pull the United States out of the trade organization is not credible.
