The White House has wound back, temporarily, its chaotic “Liberation Day” tariff program to focus on its main target, China. This offers cold comfort. Deepening trade hostility between the world’s economic superpowers could play out badly for the global economy, and the baseline 10% tariffs that Washington continues to levy on other countries will still be harmful (with no relief in sight for Heard Island’s Macaroni penguins). Washington’s willingness to deploy the economic equivalent of a nuclear “escalate to de-escalate” approach as an apparent negotiatingtactic has already done enduring damage worldwide to US credibility. It has certainly taken a hit in Southeast Asia, a region that has benefitted enormously from globalization.
Southeast Asia and the New Economic Disorder | German Marshall Fund of the United States
