Cato Trade

Trade is one of the best, if not the best, foreign policy tool that we have. And that's why this turn towards self-sufficiency, repatriating supply chains, it's a textbook example of how you lose friends and alienate people. It's losing friends in Asia and the Pacific by not engaging in trade deals. The talk in Europe right now is that Biden's Inflation Reduction Act and all the subsidies are aimed at trying to repatriate supply chains when it comes to green technologies. That's a way of attracting European businesses to go to the US and lose jobs to the US. So it's also a way of alienating those who should be your closest partners.