The United States, in terms of its global economic outlook, is behaving like a rogue power today. It led the world on the garden path of Washington Consensus economic policies in the post-war era. This also included a rules-based trade liberalisation under the aegis of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
It was a beneficial deal for capital and consumers in advanced countries including the US. But it also created a large cohort of losers among the non-rich in the advanced world, which, eventually created the ground for someone like Donald Trump to capture political power. Today, Trump is using this political capital to take America away from its trade liberalisation commitment and wreaking havoc on the global trading order.
The huge disruption and harmful consequences, including for the American economy, notwithstanding, a democratically elected government in a sovereign country has every right to change its policies including on things such as trade. Also Read: Terms of Trade: The economics behind the demise of ‘it’s the economy, stupid’ That multilateral bodies such as the WTO are bystanders to this disruption by Trump only underlines the fact that the so-called rules-based order was always tilted towards the US than actually multilateral in the true sense of the term. The rest of the world, India included, has no choice but to respond, adjust and cut their losses.
Trump’s rhetoric vis-à-vis India has been quite shrill in the recent past. He has described India as.
