Proponents of Isolation Never Become Victors

Multilateralism in the political and economic space has always led to frameworks that favor the mighty. WTO was no exception. With agriculture kept out of its purview, it could never become a truly fair and free trading system. China was the only large emerging economy that exploited relative openness in low-cost manufactured goods to take full advantage of the system. Other emerging economies could at best garner minor gains.

- Ravi Chaudhry

Now we see an even more blatant exercise of unilateral authority. The Trump trumpet, anchored on ‘buy American and hire American’ is pretty much equivalent to the declaration of an ‘economic war’. It is uncertain what types of battles the US will initiate, but it is certain that many countries, particularly China and Mexico, will retaliate in a way that will hurt not only the US, but, through collateral damage, others as well—including themselves. History provides several testimonies to show that the initiators of political or economic aggression or even the proponents of political and ec