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Looks as if Trump is preparing to declare victory in the trade war and rapidly retreat to the starting line 1/ nytimes.com/2019/03/03/bus…
The same thing happened with NAFTA, the "worst trade agreement" in history, replaced with the Village People agreement, aka the USMCA, which is basically NAFTA but a bit worse (trade experts I know call it "NAFTA 0.8") 2/
But this doesn't mean that the trade war had no effect. The US has inflicted a lot of self-harm: we've shown ourselves both capricious (national security tariffs on Canada? Really?) and easily rolled -- a classic bully who runs away when challenged 3/
And the hoisting with our own petard is beginning already. The WTO has just given America a big win over Chinese ag subsidies – but the ruling will be unenforceable because Trump has undermined the WTO in general and crippled its appellate body 4/ washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/…
PS: even as Trump makes trade peace with China, those "national security" steel tariffs on Canada remain in place. With these guys, authoritarian regimes who can make payoffs, political or otherwise, always have the advantage over countries with rule of law 5/
