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The new lesson for U.S. multinationals once the U.S. ratifies USMCA and like deals around the world: If you want to invest in a dodgy jurisdiction that doesn’t play by the rules, whether a China or a Libya or a Congo or a Newfoundland, you do so at your own risk, or if you want to mitigate the risk, do so at your own expense by buying political risk-type insurance on the free market. If you want to avoid that risk, or the cost of the insurance for taking on that risk, invest at home, or in a jurisdiction that has laws you can live with.

Today, companies doing business in China often rely on government-subsidized insurance and guarantees provided by bodies such as Export Development Canada (which subsidizes 60 per cent of Canadian companies doing business in China), Overseas Private Investment Corporation in the U.S. or multilateral agencies such as the World Bank.

Look for Trump to curb their use — government-backed insurance is a spur to the artificial globalization he abhors — so that investments in countries that don’t respect the rule of law reflect their true, free-market risk. Look for bad actors like China to languish rather than reform, because tyrannies can’t easily reform, not without losing their tyrants. China’s economy is entirely dominated by state-controlled and state-owned corporations, all desirous of protecting their own turf and all needed by China’s Communist Party to maintain the economic controls that keep President Xi Jinping and his comrades in power.

Trump’s end game is to see China’s economy ever weaker, ever struggling to maintain its leaders’ militaristic ambitions. He said this week that “frankly, it’s too early to talk” to China about trade reform — that it isn’t yet ready. When China becomes ready, it won’t like the terms of trade on offer.

Trump’s new World Economic Order plans to bifurcate the world, with the democracies thriving and the tyrannies struggling, until one way or the other they come over from the dark side.

Lawrence Solomon is a policy analyst with Toronto-based Probe International.

LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com