An Important Lesson from Brexit

I have, I must confess, not studied Brexit. Seceding seemed like a poor choice a priori, but a pretty straightforward process once undertaken: disengage from the regulatory regime in Brussels, negotiate a trade deal with the EU equivalent to that of the 36 other trade agreements the EU has negotiated, and finally, actively negotiate comparable

An Inconvenient Truth about Trade Wars

Robert A. Rogowsky, Professor, Trade & Economic Diplomacy, Middlebury Institute of International Studies Adj. Professor, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service The inconvenient truth about a Trade War is that you actually have to pay for it as you go. The weapons of a trade war—restricting our own desires to buy a trading partner’s goods

History Doesn’t Repeat, But it is Rhyming Like Crazy.

As we daily explore the consequences of discombobulation diplomacy—of which an important subset is what Ed Luce has exquisitely labeled “diplotainment”—we plumb ever deeper levels of concern for America’s future, for Pax Americana, and for the liberal order in general. China, we hear regularly is playing ‘the long game.’ The United States does not seem

Trade Wars Are Weird

A trade war is a weird kind of war. We think of war as sending warriors and ordinance somewhere else to destroy a lot of people and stuff “over there,” to fight until finally someone gives up. Trade “war” is different because the weapons are different: trade barriers are imposed aggressively against another trading partner

A Big Week In Trade—No other way to describe it.

The past week was a busy one in trade. The NAFTA negotiations faltered and seem to have missed their U.S. domestic deadline. Hearings on the Section 301 action allowed scores of special interests to make their case for either imposing or not imposing scores of particular tariffs. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross publically lamented that

U.S and China Relations: Time for Serious Food Diplomacy

The ominous drumbeats of a trade war underscore the critical juncture of US-China relations. It is a good example of, what business theorists call coopetition—the complex game of competing and cooperation at the same time. An illustrative example might be Samsung-Apple’s dog-eat-dog global competition in smartphones and patent litigation, while maintaining a supportive and lucrative