The fallout from the WTO ruling against the US should be interesting to watch, if you can stand it. The US was the world’s leading advocate of creating this administrative body in the first place. We were told how a world bureaucracy would miraculously bring about what every liberal mind for many centuries has called for: a world without commercial borders.
Then, it turns out that the current crop of state administrators in Washington finds some politically compelling reasons for protectionism, and pretends that all that past rhetoric about the glories of free trade doesn’t matter in the slightest. It thereby passes egregriously protectionist edicts.
Next step: the WTO begins to rule against the US, and the US government does what it always does, which is to completely ignore the international body while adhering to policies that benefit the US government and its friends, regardless of anyone else’s view. The WTO then takes the next step: it gives the green light to retaliatory measures by the EU.
What are we left with? An officially approved trade war, blessed by the institution that was supposed to bring us free trade--a classic case of government, in this case, international governnment, doing the opposite of what it was supposedly intended to do. Will free traders learn the lesson that there is no substitute for ideological change?
