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Not even a month into his presidency, Donald Trump is moving to dismantle seven decades of American policy built on trade deals and multinational alliances that help fuel the U.S. and global economies.
And no one is sure what will replace them.
The void risks intensifying uncertainty at home and abroad. Without knowing whether trade will be disrupted, business people in the United States and abroad could be forced to rethink their plans.
“The big problem comes when there is uncertainty,” says Marcus Moufarrige of Servcorp, a company in Sydney, Australia, that sells office space and technology services abroad. “Uncertainty stops businesses from making decisions. It stops everything.”
For now, stock prices are soaring as investors focus on Trump’s pledge to cut taxes and business regulations. But his radical break with the past is raising worries. Fitch Ratings, for instance, warns that the uncertainty surrounding Trump’s policies poses global risks — from disrupted trade relations to confrontations that unnerve investors.
The president’s hostility toward exiting trade deals and suspicion of long-term allies is also leaving a vacuum in global leadership — one that China seems eager to fill. President Xi Jinping last month became the first Chinese head of state to attend an annual gathering of business elites in Davos, Switzerland. Xi used the occasion to declare China a champion of free trade, usurping the traditional U.S. role as the leading booster of globalization. China, the world’s leading exporter, wants to expand its global influence.
Trump has offered few details of his trade plans, beyond pressuring U.S. companies to keep or create jobs in America, taking a tougher line in forging deals and slapping tariffs on nations that are deemed to exploit the United States.
“There’s not a lot of substance to his policies,” says Gordon Hanson, director of the University of California San Diego’s Center on Global Transformation. “It consists of two things: Jaw-boning corporate America — “create more jobs here or else” — and across-the board trade protectionism.”
Companies heavily involved in imports or exports can’t easily develop their business plans without knowing what specific moves Trump will embrace or achieve.
Among the uncertainties:
Will Trump insist on taxing imports if he doesn’t get the concessions he wants from America’s trading partners?
If America abandons existing agreements, would allies trust it to adhere to any new trade deals?
Would Trump risk igniting a trade war whereby other countries impose retaliatory taxes and sanctions on U.S. goods? Will America’s old alliances endure? If not, what replaces them?
Gone, for now, is the long-standing principle that what’s good for its allies is usually good for America. As Trump declared in his inaugural speech, “From this day forward it’s going to be only America first.”
Trump, of course, sees things differently. He argues that the existing order has short-changed America — especially blue-collar U.S. workers — exposing them to unfair competition with low-wage foreign laborers and to unjust trade practices by China and others.
The result, he said in his inaugural: “Rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation.”
His words resonate among communities that blame low-wage foreign competition for the loss of 4.8 million US. factory jobs since 2000 and among families whose incomes have stagnated.
Trump has pulled the United States out of a 12-nation Asia-Pacific trade accord negotiated by the Obama administration. He’s intent on renegotiating a pact with Mexico and Canada — and dumping it if he can’t improve the version in place since 1994. He’s questioned NATO’s usefulness, considered slashing America’s financial contribution to the United Nations and bickered with allies Mexico and Australia.
Critics are confounded by Trump’s zeal to tear down an international system that nurtured peace after World War II, encouraged global commerce, lifted much of East Asia out of poverty and empowered the United States to become the world’s leading superpower.
“This is the terrifying thing,” says Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a think tank that promotes free trade. “This is the biggest reversal we’ve had since World War II. It does have echoes of the ’20s and ’30s, when the U.S. said, to its detriment, that everyone else is ripping us off.”
In Roseville, Illinois, a soybean and corn farmer named Ron Moore had expected to benefit from the Trans-Pacific Partnership with 11 Asia-Pacific countries. The TPP would have pried open Japan’s market to more U.S. farm exports, thereby benefiting U.S. cattle and hog farmers. Moore provides feed to those livestock producers.
“It was going to add value to my soybeans,” says Moore, whose soybeans are shipped down the Mississippi River to New Orleans and often on to China and other foreign markets. “We’re a little disappointed.”
The TPP had stalled in Congress. But Trump officially pulled out of the deal, saying he could do better by negotiating with countries one on one. Some critics backed his argument. They argued that the TPP would have killed American jobs by exposing U.S. workers to low-wage competition in Southeast Asia.
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