Commentary: Washington alone can not define fair trade

BEIJING, Feb. 1 — In a clear attempt to cater for his
nationalistic base, U.S. President Donald Trump pledged to scrap “unfair
trade practices” with foreign partners in his first State of the Union
address on Tuesday.

After listing a raft of figures that are meant to prove the success of his
economic policy in the year, Trump accentuated his endeavor to straighten
up U.S trade which allegedly has suffered great loss due to “unfair
practices” of other countries. “America has finally turned the page on
decades of unfair trade deals that sacrificed our prosperity and shipped
away our companies, our jobs and our wealth….The era of economic
surrender is totally over. From now on, we expect trading relationships to
be fair and, very importantly, reciprocal,” he said.

While such remarks do not surprise anyone paying attention to Trump’s
“America First” doctrine, they still deserve serious discussion so as to
identify the potential dangers of U.S. attempt to re-model global trade,
based on its own terms rather than the global consensus. A few days ago at
Davos, Switzerland, Trump, though adopting a more conciliatory tone
regarding his signature “America First” mantra, put fair trade before free
trade to justify Washington’s slew of actions in recent months that are
widely interpreted as protectionism.

As the world’s biggest economy and the sole super power, the United States
is undoubtedly among the top beneficiaries of global trade, a system
running on rules which Washington played a key role in making. It seems
that the Trump administration desires a new set of rules that suits its
selfish interests, without giving much thought to the potential
disturbances to the global economy, which is currently undergoing mild
recovery but still far from sustainable growth.Decades of globalization has
intensified the link between countries and nowadays the well-being of one
nation is more than ever relied on that of others. Free trade allows
countries to better tap their comparative advantages and is in its nature a
win-win solution, rather than a zero-sum game that must have winners and
losers.

It is no exaggeration that the United States has irked neighboring Canada
and Mexico by renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), a bad trade deal according to Trump, and has annoyed EU leaders by
repeatedly threatening punitive trade measures. Washington has a lot to
lose should it decide to take actions in pursuit of the vaguely-defined
fair trade, which is so far only known to the world as a new weapon in the
“America First” arsenal. To convincingly define fair trade, Washington
needs to hear the voices of all its major trade partners and avoid any
unilateral actions. – XINHUA