The World Isn’t Waiting for Trump on Trade

During the campaign, Donald Trump slammed current and potential U.S. free-trade deals, called for possible tariffs on China, Mexico, and other countries, and promised to use the presidential bully pulpit to attack companies that outsource. In the transition, he’s appointed a U.S. trade representative known for fighting to impose punitive tariffs, lashed out at companies he believes have outsourced jobs from America, and created a special office on trade and industrial policy to be led by an extremely harsh critic of free trade. While it seems unclear how committed Trump is to many of these promises—he also chose a U.S. ambassador to China with long experience promoting bilateral trade—the president-elect has already triggered a counterreaction in global trade and business, showing that other countries aren’t going to wait for him to act. They’ll go ahead and determine their own economic futures.

The biggest beneficiary may be China, which is positioning itself as the defender of the global economic order. In a speech to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in late November, Chinese President Xi Jinping, obviously commenting on Trump’s election, urged Asian and Pacific nations to “deepen and expand cooperation in our region” and announced that, no matter what happens in the U.S., Beijing would take the lead on promoting global economic ties.