Evan Vucci/AP Photo Trump’s backward-looking trade strategy threatens America’s future, experts say

President Donald Trump’s refusal to make multilateral trade deals suited to the 21st century economy could cost the U.S. key influence in the global market for decades to come, a group of trade policy experts said at a debate Wednesday evening.

“We can’t continue looking in the rearview mirror at manufacturing experience as our guide,” said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “We need to learn from the past as we move into the next era that will be about global flows and services.”


The trade experts at the discussion, “Globalization and the American Worker,” criticized Trump’s moves that have isolated the U.S. while China’s trade power balloons.

The president should work with nations that share similar U.S. concerns about intellectual property theft and related issues, said Mercatus Center Fellow Christine McDaniel. “The way to change China’s behavior is to work with our likeminded allies who are just as frustrated with China as we are,” said McDaniel, who served as an economist in the Bush White House and Treasury Department.

The debate was the final event in a six-part series on America’s role in the world organized by the Brookings Institution’s Foreign Policy Program and the Charles Koch Institute in partnership with POLITICO. Held at Wayne State University in Detroit, the discussion was moderated by POLITICO trade reporter Doug Palmer and Crain’s Detroit Business reporter Dustin Walsh.

Experts worry Trump has his eye on a trade war that could bruise Americans. Brookings Institution fellow William Galston, who served as a domestic policy aide to President Bill Clinton, acknowledged that Trump was channeling frustrations of working-class Americans who have faced decade after decade of wage stagnation.

“It’s no accident Trump was elected president of the United States,” Galston said. “There are tens of millions of people in the U.S., and every advanced democracy, who feel, for reasons they can’t quite explain, they have gotten the short end of the stick.”

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But Dan Ikenson of the Cato Institute said Trump’s approach to addressing their concerns — including withdrawing from existing trade agreements and slapping tariffs on allies — would exact costs on the U.S. economy.

“If you believe trade is a zero-sum game, if you subscribe to Trump’s perspective, you might actually say he’s doing a good job,” Ikenson said. “He’s throwing U.S. weight around. He might secure some acquiescence to his demands. … He’s going after rules of trade without any idea what’s going to replace it. How are businesses going to be able to plan for anything?”

“Investors are looking for certainty. He’s looking for uncertainty,” Ikenson said. “I hope this chapter is over soon.”

By pulling out of trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and shunning groups such as the G-7 last weekend, experts said Trump is pulling the U.S. away from writing key trade rules that will structure the developing global economy.

“Let’s get back to the rules-based system,” McDaniel said. “Let’s sit down with our like-minded allies and write down stronger rules. Let the president show leadership on that front so the U.S. can write the future.”

That future means competing in a new era of tech-based development like artificial intelligence and cloud-based services, Muro said, because China’s economic growth hinged on manufacturing is over.

“That is going to very much change the way we think about this competition,” Muro said. “We need to buckle our seatbelts here.”