Inside Out | US-China trade: protectionists should be careful what they wish for

Sad to say, I believe we are watching the sun set on a four-decade era of steadily liberalised world trade and of unprecedented openness to multilateral cooperation. Amid rising international clamour for protection, my first thought is beware what you wish for.

Instead of positively responding to the urgent imperative to work together to bring Covid-19 under control, we have seen disarray. Instead of cooperating to find an optimal response, governments have shut their borders, created a hodgepodge of different strategic responses and allowed millions to die unnecessarily.

Leaders are still ignoring the merits of working together and are instead debating how to be more “resilient” in future. This means pressing for subsidies to forge intrinsically protectionist policies to ensure domestic self-reliance.

A quick browse of articles in the Post over the past weekend reveals the extent of this broad-based slippage towards protection. We see the Japanese government discussing subsidies of around US$3.4 billion to Taiwan’s TSMC and Sony for a new semiconductor production plant that will reduce its reliance on imported chips.