| THE GREAT U.S. RETREAT: Michael Beeman, former assistant U.S. trade representative for Japan, Korea and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, says a Donald Trump presidency risks accelerating a shift away from the United States’ decades-old free trade consensus. But he added that Harris is just as unlikely to restore U.S. trade engagement with the Asia-Pacific and developing countries and suspects she won’t resume Trump-era negotiations with the United Kingdom and Japan. “There is no doubt that if former President Trump is reelected, that the degree of change and shift will be pretty sharp,” Beeman told Morning Trade in an interview. He said Trump’s trade proposals reflect a “much more austere and dramatic” approach now, compared to his first term. “With the Harris administration, it’s the same trajectory,” Beeman added. “Even if it’s with a smile, it doesn’t mean that it’s appreciated by other nations, including allies.” Beeman, who served as AUSTR during the Trump presidency and for half of Biden’s term, writes in his new book — “Walking Out: America’s New Trade Policy in the Asia-Pacific and Beyond” — that the U.S., over the last several years has been stagnating on the world stage and straining relations with allies and adversaries alike. “The general trajectory where there was a greater overlapping consensus on what to do about trade policy congealed around finding ways to create new barriers to the U.S. market. That’s where the new right and the progressive left have met,” Beeman told your host. On Biden’s IPEF: Another example is the U.S.-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework arrangement. The Biden administration opted to reject the trade pillar after facing pushback from Democrats. “Call it a trade-curious-at-best agreement. It’s a very different kind of model, and it’s not clear it’s the kind of model that the rest of the world is terribly interested in,” Beeman told your host. Trump longs for the 1930s: Beeman also criticized Trump’s proposals, which include universal tariffs as high as 20 percent. He suggested the fallout could be similar to what followed then-President Herbert Hoover’s signing of a 20-percent tariff into law under the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930. “The reality is that increasing tariffs and barriers is going to lead to retaliation. And that is exactly where the United States found itself in the 1930s and what Franklin Roosevelt campaigned on in 1932 — on the recognition that this [trend] was contributing to the economic depression, and on the need to pull back from that and be more measured and realistic,” Beeman said. Your host has the full interview here. (For Pros!)
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