Sturm und Drang: US Trade with India, Korea, Japan, Switzerland and the EU
WITA welcomes former trade negotiators to the Exchange Podcast.
On this week’s episode, former trade negotiators dove into the Trump Administration’s trade negotiations and announcements with Japan, the EU, Korea, Switzerland, and India, and discuss their broader impact on the global stage, including the Xi-Putin-Modi photo-op.
Featured Speakers:
Introduction: Kenneth Levinson, CEO, Washington International Trade Association
Dan Mullaney, Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council; former Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Europe and the Middle East, Office of the U.S. Trade Representative
Mark Linscott, Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council; former Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for South and Central Asia/WTO and Multilateral, Office of the U.S. Trade Representative
Wendy Cutler, Senior Vice President, Asia Society Policy Institute; former Acting Deputy U.S. Trade Representative, Office of the U.S. Trade Representative
Moderator: Joe Damond, Chair of International Trade Policy and Global Life Sciences, Crowell Global Advisors; former Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Asia and Pacific, Office of the U.S. Trade Representative
Some Lessons from the WTO for the Changing Global Trade System
Seven months into President Donald Trump’s chaotic tariff policies, commentators including Ambassador Jamieson Greer and Council on Foreign Relations President Michael Froman have begun to address how those policies will change the global trading system. The dust can settle in any number of ways—new arrangements could supplement or even replace the World Trade Organization (WTO). Regardless of the direction, it is worth considering several lessons from the WTO experience.
The WTO, already hamstrung by its need for consensus to negotiate new rules, has been sidelined in responding to U.S. tariffs, as members have instead entered into bilateral talks with the United States. The resulting deals have cast aside WTO commitments on tariff caps and rules against discrimination among WTO members.
Although the willingness of trading partners to make deals with the United States has shocked some observers, that willingness merely reflects the same impulse to create stability for traders that underlay the creation of the WTO itself. Should the WTO or some other international arrangement again serve as an effective means of achieving that stability, countries will most assuredly flock to it—even if the goal is to achieve stability in trade relations among themselves, without the United States. Indeed, some have floated the idea of such arrangements, including between the European Union and the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership.
This underscores a central lesson in any new arrangement or effort at WTO reform: trade agreements need to be pragmatic and mutually beneficial if they are to succeed. That point may seem obvious, but it was lost over the years as WTO members and outside observers lauded the organization’s contributions to global welfare with almost religious fervor and treated the pronouncements of its dispute settlement reviewing mechanism, the Appellate Body, as sacrosanct. That deference led the Appellate Body to stray into rule-making and forget that WTO compliance, as a practical matter, involves a choice, despite the ostensibly “binding” nature of the rules. That element of voluntariness has been clearly demonstrated in the current wave of bilateral deals. Awareness of that voluntariness could have added urgency to efforts to update WTO rules to address modern concerns, as well as a greater appreciation that dispute-settlement outcomes need to be viewed as credible, and not simply the pronouncements of a body convinced that parties had no choice but to comply.
Read the Full Article Here
09/03/2025 | Bruce Hirsh | Council on Foreign Relations
Can Middle Powers Anchor the Future of Global Trade?
The fractures in today’s global trading system have been years in the making — driven by shifting power balances, uneven economic benefits, and the erosion of trust in the rules-based order.
At the center of this tension is the US-China rivalry. China’s rapid economic rise has sparked concerns over intellectual property protection, state-driven industrial policy, and overcapacity in sectors such as steel and solar. The United States, meanwhile, faces the hollowing out of its industrial base and mounting political pressure to “bring jobs home.”
Security and trade are now inseparable. From the South China Sea to critical mineral supply chains, to advanced semiconductors and artificial intelligence, strategic vulnerabilities have become deeply entwined with commercial policy.
In late July, while in Singapore, I joined an excellent dialogue co-hosted by the Hinrich Foundation and the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada on the state of global trade and the upheaval that the world has been grappling with — not just in the past few months with the return of Donald Trump to the White House, but over a decade in the making. What we are witnessing today is the convergence of deep-rooted faultlines, from China’s rise and the US response to the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) paralysis to the resurgence of populism and protectionism, now amplified by geopolitics and security concerns.
The WTO’s inability to update its rules or enforce them effectively has only compounded the problem, leaving the system ill-equipped to manage today’s geopolitics-driven trade disputes. When the WTO was created in 1995, richer members like the US committed to keeping tariffs low — as low as 2%–5% — while developing countries were permitted much higher ceilings, sometimes up to 100%, to support a more even spread of global economic development. That framework helped lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, but over time it entrenched imbalances: some economies, including China, have become global powers while still benefiting from flexibilities designed for far poorer nations.
With no comprehensive tariff agreement in over 30 years — since the WTO’s Uruguay Round in 1994 — the rules are outdated. There is now a sense of expectation that stronger economies must take on greater responsibilities while ensuring the system continues to protect genuinely vulnerable countries. In the absence of such reform, nations are increasingly turning to tariffs, export controls, and industrial subsidies — fragmenting the global trading system.
Read the Full Article Here
09/02/2025 | Mary Ng | The Hinrich Foundation
Shifting from Geopolitics To Geoeconomics: How Trump Turned Trade Into Strategy
The pattern is straightforward: threaten harsh tariffs, negotiate down to something painful but manageable, and walk away claiming a win.
During his presidency, Donald Trump made it very clear that trade wasn’t just about goods and services—it was about leverage. He flipped the traditional script, where foreign policy meant diplomacy, alliances, and sometimes conflict, and instead pushed a bold economic toolkit to achieve geopolitical goals. This wasn’t just a few random tariff hikes or trade wars. It was a full-on pivot—replacing classic geopolitics with geoeconomics as the primary way of exerting American influence.
Instead of dispatching troops or deepening treaty commitments, Trump’s White House leaned into tariffs, deals, and trade frameworks like a general wielding economic weapons. His administration threatened sweeping tariffs, then used that threat to bring countries to the negotiating table. And while critics may have called it erratic or improvisational, there was a consistent underlying tactic: use market access as both a carrot and a stick.
To understand this shift, you don’t need to look far beyond five major works that frame the thinking behind Trump’s actions. In War by Other Means (Blackwill & Harris), the idea of geoeconomics is laid out clearly—economic instruments used for geopolitical ends. Trump didn’t just read that playbook—he rewrote it in real time. Robert Gilpin’s Global Political Economy reminds us that international markets are always political, never neutral, and Trump’s tariffs were political to their core. In The Economic Weapon by Nicholas Mulder, we’re reminded that sanctions and trade restrictions can function like war—slow, grinding, often just as destructive. Henry Kissinger’s World Order hinted at this earlier: power today flows not only through armies but through the control of systems—financial, commercial, and technological. And finally, Dani Rodrik’s Straight Talk on Trade cautions about the backlash from global economic entanglement—something Trump leaned into rather than away from.
Trump’s approach was blunt but strategic. Take, for instance, the flurry of trade activity in recent days. After pausing reciprocal tariffs briefly in April, the administration vowed to close 90 trade deals in 90 days. That wasn’t just campaign bravado—it reflected a frenzied push to reset how the U.S. engages with the world. Within months, deals were struck with the UK, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, and the EU. The pattern was straightforward: threaten harsh tariffs, negotiate down to something painful but manageable, and walk away claiming a win.
Read the Full Analysis Here
09/02/2025 | Syed Raiyan Amir | Eurasia Review
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