The art of the imaginary trade deal

Are we going to have a fullblown trade war with China, and maybe the rest of the world? Nobody knows — because it all depends on the whims of one man. And Tariff Man is ignorant, volatile and delusional.

Why do I say that it’s all about one man? After all, after the 2016 US election and the Brexit vote in Britain, there was a lot of talk about a broad popular backlash against globalisation. Over the past two years, however, it has become clear that this backlash was both smaller and shallower than advertised.

Where, after all, is the major constituency supporting Donald Trump’s tariffs and threats to exit international agreements? Big business hates the prospect of a trade war, and stocks plunge whenever that prospect becomes more likely. Labour hasn’t rallied behind Trumpist protectionism either.

Meanwhile, the percentage of Americans believing that foreign trade is good for the economy is near a record high. Even those who criticise trade seem to be motivated by loyalty to Mr Trump, not by deep policy convictions: During the 2016 campaign self-identified Republicans swung wildly from the view that trade agreements are good to the view that they’re bad, then swung back again once Mr Trump seemed to be negotiating agreements of his own. (We have always been in a trade war with East Asia.)

But if there’s no strong constituency for protectionism, why are we teetering on the brink of a trade war? Blame US trade law.

Once upon a time, Congress used to write detailed tariff bills that were stuffed full of giveaways to special interests, with destructive effects on both the economy and American diplomacy.

So in the 1930s Franklin D Roosevelt established a new system in which the executive branch negotiates trade deals with other countries, and Congress simply votes these deals up or down. The US system then became the template for global negotiations that culminated in the creation of the World Trade Organisation.

The creators of the US trade policy system realised, however, that it couldn’t be too rigid or it would shatter in times of stress; there had to be ways to relieve pressure when necessary.

So trade law gives the executive the right to impose tariffs without new legislation under certain circumstances, mainly to protect national security, to retaliate against unfair foreign practices, or to give industries facing sudden surges in foreign competition time to adjust.

In other words, US trade law gives the president a lot of discretionary power over trade, as part of a system that curbs the destructive influence of corrupt, irresponsible members of Congress. And that setup worked very well for more than 80 years.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t intended to handle the problem of a corrupt, irresponsible president. Mr Trump is pretty much all alone in lusting for a trade war, but he has virtually dictatorial authority over trade. What’s he doing with that power? He’s trying to negotiate deals. Unfortunately, he really, really doesn’t know what he’s doing. On trade, he’s a rebel without a clue.

Even as he declared himself Tariff Man, Mr Trump revealed that he doesn’t understand how tariffs work. No, they aren’t taxes on foreigners, they’re taxes on our own consumers. When trying to make deals, he seems to care only about whether he can claim a “win”, not about substance.

Most important, his inability to do international diplomacy, which we’ve seen on many fronts, carries over to trade talks. Remember, he claimed to have “solved” the North Korean nuclear crisis, but Kim Jong-un is still expanding his ballistic missile capacity.

Markets plunged earlier this week as investors realised they’d been had.

Let’s be clear: China engages in real misbehaviour, especially with regard to intellectual property: The Chinese essentially rip off technology. So there is a case for toughening our stance on trade.

But that toughening should be undertaken in concert with other nations that also suffer from Chinese misbehaviour, and it should have clear objectives.

The last person you want to play hardball here is someone who doesn’t grasp the basics of trade policy and who can’t even give an honest account of what went down in a meeting.

Unfortunately, that’s the person who’s now in charge, and it’s hard to see how he can be restrained.

So the future of world trade now hinges largely on Donald Trump’s mental processes. That is not a comforting thought.