ByHank Tucker
ByHank Tucker,
Forbes Staff.
onald Trump has used his first five months back in office to attack longtime allies like Canada, Mexico and the European Union, insisting the United States “will no longer tolerate being ripped off.”
His posture with trade partners has been more competitive than collaborative, imposing or threatening heavy-handed tariffs under the pretense that they’re running up trade deficits to enrich themselves at Americans’ expense. He’s right that U.S. manufacturing jobs have sharply dropped since the turn of the century, gutting industrial cities across America’s heartland that have in turn flocked to him in voting booths. But it’s hard to make the case that globalization has been a zero-sum game.
