Eric Chiou, Oct. 9, 2017 in Taipei Times
This year has gradually revealed itself to be an exciting roller-coaster journey characterized by several astonishing ups and downs in the global economy.
The expected tsunami of trade protectionism, primarily stirred up by US President Donald Trump’s intriguing “America first” agenda and aggravated by the withdrawal of the UK from the EU — the so-called “Brexit” — has surprisingly not invoked broadly devastating effects on the global economy, nor has it undermined the solid direction of global free trade as many pundits expected.
Although Trump’s rhetoric of economic nationalism has not yet caused any conspicuous damage, compared with the remarkable progress of economic globalization in the past two decades, optimistic prospects for the world economy have been irrefutably overshadowed by a rising skepticism over globalization and the looming storm of trade protectionism, which has not been seen since the 1999 WTO protest in Seattle.
Trump’s “America first” agenda has mainly focused on job creation and a reduction of the trade deficit by encouraging manufacturing firms to shift their production back to the US and by renegotiating the terms of trade deals to be more favorable to the US, while wielding the stick of trade sanctions to accomplish the goal of boosting sales of US goods in overseas markets….Full Text in Taipei Times Link