What’s the future of global trade?

Donald Trump’s tariffs are a twentieth century tool that simply won’t work in the 21st century global trading system. That’s the view of today’s guest, Richard Baldwin, professor of international economics at the IMD Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland. Speaking to the FT’s Martin Wolf, Baldwin explains how the shift towards global manufacturing supply chains since the 1990s, and the more recent explosion in digital services exports, mean that the impact of across-the-board import taxes such as the ones proposed by the new US administration will be counterproductive and much more limited than in the past. Nonetheless, should we still worry about the harm that Trump’s policies may be doing to the global trading system, and how should other countries respond?

Martin Wolf is chief economics commentator at the Financial Times. You can find his column here

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