ITC challenges Trump’s policies with wider benefits from broad trade deals
Geneva — International trade deals have real benefits for small firms’ competitiveness and regional integration, the International Trade Centre (ITC) said on Wednesday in research challenging US President Donald Trump’s "America First" policies. ITC executive director Arancha González said governments often failed to reflect the wider interests of business in trade negotiations, with a reluctance to see trade and investment as two sides of the same coin, and providing only soft support for consumer protection, gender equality, tax co-ordination and small firms. "It’s a wake-up call for trade negotiators doing trade agreements to not apply a purely mercantilist lens but look at the wider implications of trade," González said. Mercantilism is associated with attempts to use trade to gain economic advantage over other nations, epitomised by Trump’s policies to "make America great again". But the research by the ITC, a joint venture of the World Trade Organisation and the UN which advis...
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