As we mentioned yesterday, this week and next we’ll be using the Daily Review to look at WPR’s coverage of some of the major stories that have driven developments in global politics since January.
Yesterday we looked at U.S.-China relations. Coming up next week will be global conflict, the race for critical minerals, and the technologies shaping the future of global politics and human societies. Today’s theme is the global effects of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade wars.
Trump’s Trade Wars
Ever since his emergence as a public figure in the 1980s, Trump has been fixated on U.S. trade deficits, and they were a central feature of his political rise prior to the 2016 presidential election. During his subsequent first term as president, he unveiled his heterodox approach to tackling those deficits: tariffs. Reversing decades of U.S. trade policy, which since the end of World War II had lowered U.S. tariff rates while ushering in a liberalized global trade regime, Trump famously declared that “trade wars are easy to win.”