On the last and least clear part of the Trump agenda—the attack on PTAs—prospects of success are all but non-existent. If the United States were to refrain from making such “free-trade agreements,” all that would happen is that other nations would make them in the United States’ absence, isolating Washington and forcing it to engage in trade, which it can hardly avoid, as an outsider. A return to the old efforts at universal reductions in trade restrictions, if Trump really aspires to such a regime, is no longer an option. The only reason the United States succeeded between 1945 and the 1970s is because memories of Smoot-Hawley gave it an enormous will, and the results of the Second World War made it an unquestioned economic hegemon. Neither factor exists today.

Milton Ezrati is a contributing editor at The National Interest, an affiliate of the Center for the Study of Human Capital at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), and Chief Economist for Vested, the New York-based communications firm. His latest book is Thirty Tomorrows: The Next Three Decades of Globalization, Demographics, and How We Will Live.

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