,
10 tweets,
4 min read
Read on Twitter
Blaming trade for the world's ills, this is typical of the new left-wing case for national protectionism on the almost entirely unconvincing grounds that it was trade deals that led to the populist backlash. There's a case for a new model of trade liberalisation, this isn't it 1/
All the fault of the creation of the WTO apparently? There's implications here that we shouldn't trade in services, that agriculture trade is now fully liberalised, that there shouldn't be international rules to trade. Sorry, but don't find this credible 2/ 
We should never have let China into the world trade system? What about the increased global prosperity as a result of that happening, which cannot be denied? Distribution is an issue, and I don't at all dispute the last sentence, but is that just down to trade?
I find this paragraph equally unconvincing. We still have welfare states in many countries that are also open to trade. Developing nations need not just to diversify but to trade, and there have long been protectionist voices against that 4/
Various things not quite right here, the first bilateral investment treaties come in the 1960s, the opening up of international finance isn't predominantly done through trade deals, pharma companies lobby, but so do many others... 5/
Oddly then there's not actually much in this policy prescription for fixing the ills caused by trade policy, much is already available and practiced through trade agreements, quite often under great pressure from powerful domestic lobbies 6/
I struggle to reconcile this passage on China with the earlier one blaming it for mass loss of manufacturing jobs. Surely in fact this is the point, we need acceptable rules to trade, still can't see much of an alternative to this 7/
Life, not to mention most economic policy, produces winners and losers. Don't at all disagree with improving labour mobility, but to an awful lot of people that is one of the faults of globalisation. Just think we're missing a big agenda here 8/
Again, much of this can already happen. What we're missing is the fact that levels of competition and innovation seem to be reducing, that large companies can dominate the trade agenda for good and bad, trade and climate change etc 9/
Concluding thoughts, there's a populist backlash against economic fundamentals in many countries e.g. US, UK. We have to build a new consensus on future trade policy, but many of the tools are there to do so. International and domestic economic policy have to work in tandem /end
