Trump’s Tariffs Will Wound Free Trade, but the Blow May Not Be Fatal

The New York Times ^ | Mark Landler

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Free trade has been so beneficial to so many countries that the world may find a way to live without its biggest player.

President Trump’s self-proclaimed “liberation day,” in which he announced across-the-board tariffs on the United States’ trading partners, carries an echo of another moment when an advanced Western economy threw up walls around itself.

Like Brexit, Britain’s fateful vote nearly nine years ago to leave the European Union, Mr. Trump’s tariffs struck a hammer blow at the established order. He is pulling the United States out of the global economy much as Britain withdrew from a continentwide trading bloc, in what its backers viewed as a comparable act of liberation.

The shock of Mr. Trump’s move is reverberating even more widely, given the larger size of the American economy and its place at the fulcrum of global commerce. Yet as with Brexit, its ultimate impact is unsettled: Mr. Trump could yet reverse himself, chastened by plummeting markets or mollified by one-off deals.

More important, economists say, the rise of free trade may be irreversible, its benefits so powerful that the rest of the world finds a way to keep the system going, even without its central player. For all of the setbacks to trade liberalization, and the grievances expressed in Mr. Trump’s actions, the barriers have kept falling.

The European Union, optimists point out, did not unravel after Britain’s departure. These days, the political talk in London is about ways in which Britain can draw closer to its European neighbors. Still, that sense of possibility has come only after years of turbulence. Economists expect similar chaos to buffet the global trading system as a result of Mr. Trump’s theatrical exit.

“It will not be the end of free trade, but it is certainly a...

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Free trade has been so beneficial to so many countries that the world may find a way to live without its biggest player.

By "free trade" the Slimes and Mr. Landler mean "free trade agreements" that are thousands of pages of EXCEPTIONS to free trade that have "been so beneficial to so many countries" at the expense of the United States.

[House Atreides]

Mama always said… “Consider the source!”.

[Jim W N]

NYT’s wouldn’t know the Free Market Economy if it hit them in the face.

[everlast]

Hey Mr. Lander, GFY ESAD!

[Racketeer]

The NYT calls “free trade” a mechanism that allows other countries to charge a multiple times higher tariff on US imports into their own country than the US charges for imports from their country.

I hope this “wound” becomes a free bleeder soon so the healing can begin.

[Kazan]

Free nor fair trade is possible with one-sided tariffs.

[central_va]

Wow, a tax NYT doesn’t like!

[econjack]

Free trade simply doesn’t exist...anywhere. Is the NYT stupid enough to think the US has been operating under conditions of free trade? Even saying free trade exists with exceptions is a misstatement of fact. Once again, the Old Gray Lady shows her true colors.

[JonPreston]

Trump’s one sentence, Free Trade policy is best; don’t tariff US and we’ll do the same.

[joshua c]

what free trade?

[tennmountainman]

One-Sidded tariffs are not Free Trade. It is Trade Abuse.

[Kazan]

It’s not free trade when one side in enacting huge tariffs and there is no tariffs on our end.

[Bob434]

Cananda has what? A 200+ % tariff on American goods? and we aren’t supposed to do likewise to make it fair? It’s about time a president had the guts to say “NO MORE! We are NOT the world’s piggy bank!”

[avital2]

what “free trade” ???

[rlmorel]

I would like to say the paper and the reporter are stupid enough to think we have had “free trade” but they likely know all to well it wasn’t.

[Terry L Smith]

At the time of WW2, America had its own economy, everything to wage war we built in country.

Congress has been schtupping that ifrea ever since.

[AndyJackson]

We don’t have effin free trade.

[mass55th]

LOL!! How is it free trade if we’re paying through the nose, while countries we trade with pay nothing or very little. Some of those countries who gouge us on tariffs, get aid from this country.

[CodeToad]

NY Slimes wants to hurt America. They always have.

[OA5599]

If I were to pay a woman for sex, I suppose the New York Times would then report that as “free love.”