Trade Politics Under the Influence: A Retrospective on the Trump Administration’s Trade Policy

Abstract

The Trump Administration made a fundamental break with longstanding US trade policy. This break might be explained as expressing Trump’s affinity for traditional American isolationism. In some respects, it might also be described as an expression of strongly held personal views of Trump’s appointee to the office of United States Trade Representative, Robert Lighthizer, an individual deeply at odds with the WTO’s dispute settlement body and a trading system that in his view had cost America industrial jobs. And, in part, it might be ascribed to the views of Trump’s appointee to the office of White House Trade Policy Advisor, Peter Navarro, who had written a book, “Death by China” and had strong views on the significance of bilateral trade imbalances. The policy that emerged under this team was deeply damaging to the United States, alienated it from its traditional allies, dramatically escalated tensions with the US’s main economic rival, China, and undermined the multilateral system. The question this raises, and which this paper addresses, is who actually benefited? Cui bono? The only possible answer to this is Russia. Russia is the only country with which Trump espoused expanding trade and the geopolitical consequences of Trump’s policies worked to Russia’s benefit. Russia had long waged information war against the West under former KGB agent now President Vladimir Putin. Putin’s personal relationship with President Trump raised eyebrows and national security concerns. Whether or not US trade policy was “made in Moscow”, the result of influence operations, which is an undecidable question, for all intents and purposes it might as well have been. This paper argues that US trade policy needs to be fundamentally reset to one “made in Washington” with the interests of America and America’s western partners not in the cross-hairs but in constructive negotiation.

Keywords: US trade policy, Trump, Putin, Russia, active measures

JEL Classification: F13, F15