Stephan Richter on NPR: Trump’s Move Away From Globalization – Europe’s Perspective

David Brancaccio:

Europeans digest the future of trade now that the German leader is back home from the United States and the U.S. Treasury Secretary is back from Germany.

Watching from Berlin as the United States laid down the line is Stephan Richter, Editor-in-Chief of the Globalist. Stephan, tell us about the reaction in Germany and Europe.

Stephan Richter:

The issue is that the Europeans are truly baffled by a U.S. government rejecting any kind of multilateralism. The United States seems intent on just doing bilateral deals, so that they can always pull the other side over the table, as if in some kind of strong arming contest.

That’s not how global trade has been organized in the modern era and that’s not how it’s going to work in the future either. One can’t just take the complexity that’s inherent to the global economic system out of it and just make America “not just great” (and the United States number one in every deal).

The Europeans don’t understand that to be how the art of the deal that works. That may have been Mr. Trump’s past as a real estate guy, but it won’t work for a President of the United States.

David Brancaccio:

Alright. Also on this issue of trade, the big G20 meeting was happening in Germany and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was there and that process also pointed in a similar direction. The United States now seems to be backing off of the last 30 years of increasing globalization.

Stephan Richter:

Yes, very much so! For a very long time, until the tail end of the Obama administration, the United States was the force that provided the key push forward.

And now, it’s the one that wants to opt out. We don’t live in a G20, but a G19 world. Mr. Mnuchin, the U.S. Treasury Secretary attending the G20 finance ministers meeting in Germany this past weekend, basically played a Russian-style refusenik.

Editor’s note: This interview was conducted by David Brancaccio, the host of the Marketplace Morning Report, with The Globalist’s Stephan Richter. It was broadcast on National Public Radio all across the United States on March 20, 2017. To view this feature on the Marketplace website and listen to the 7:28 minute audio of the interview, click here.