Reference News Network, October 6 report: On September 15, the French newspaper "Les Echos" published an article titled "A Fuzzy Outline of a New Trade Order Without the United States," by Richard Jourdain, the following is a summary of the content:

In just a few weeks, US President Trump has destroyed the foundation of the global geopolitical and economic order formed after World War II. He broke the consensus on free trade, re-introduced tariffs as a tool of coercion, forcing trade partners to buy American goods and move productive investments to the United States.

This radical shift has paralyzed the multilateral institutions established decades ago. The World Trade Organization (WTO) was the first to be affected. This organization replaced the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and regulated international trade.

After World War II, the United States positioned itself as the organizer of democratic countries, advocating for "economic peace" through trade. During the decades following World War II, the world experienced a period of "happy globalization": through trade and increasing economic integration of developing countries, many people escaped poverty. This process was particularly facilitated by the WTO's Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) principle: if a country receives tariff preferences, it must equally provide them to all members.

This principle was also accompanied by special privileges for developing countries: these countries enjoyed low-tariff preferential systems to better integrate into the global economy. All of this was carried out under the "umbrella" of the United States. Now, all of this has collapsed. In the future, to do business with "Uncle Sam," you have to pay upfront.

Professor Christian Deblock from the University of Quebec in International Political Economy wrote in a study released in March this year: "The United States has entered an 'aggressive bilateralism' era: unexpectedly suppressing opponents, using all protectionist weapons, aiming to extract maximum concessions from trade partners in new agreements." According to him, Trump replaced the previous vision of "internationalist" trade liberalization with a concept of "securitization and bilateralization" of reciprocity.

Will this ideology become the default rule of the world when the United States accounts for only 13% of global trade? Washington has indeed lost its leadership over the WTO, but the idea of other countries jointly maintaining the original trade system remains uncertain.

The EU, as a top trading power, has also had to submit to the new rules of the United States. While verbally advocating multilateralism, Brussels still signed a trade agreement that significantly deviated from WTO rules. One assumption is that if European and Asian countries can unite, they might create a relatively stable new space. Cooperation under the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), mentioned by European Commission President von der Leyen, is part of this "WTO revision" approach.

The era in which the United States relied on global low-interest financing, easily attracted foreign direct investment, and almost the entire world copied its technology and legal standards probably has come to an end. Adam Posen, director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in the United States, believes that the Trump approach has caused the deepest damage to countries most closely tied to the US economy (Canada, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, and the UK). (Translated by Pan Geping)

Original text: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7558069676497043995/

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