What Trump's Trade Representative Got Wrong

Last week, USTR Jamieson Greer wrote an essay in The New York Times entitled, ‘Trump’s Trade Representative: Why We Remade the Global Order’. Simon has already done the heavy lifting by asking some necessary questions about this new order.

Out of all the inaccuracies and “too early to tell” claims made, my biggest concern is how badly Greer restates the history of the multilateral trading system to depict a self-fulfilling prophecy about the remaking of the trading system. Failure to understand that the past makes it impossible to proclaim something is made, remade, broken, or new. And, honestly, if you cannot learn the lessons of the past, well then ... do not write about it.

There are several historical inaccuracies in this essay. Let me take a moment to centre on the claim that Bretton Woods is where the rules-based trading system began ~ the start of the yellow brick road. It’s not.

We could say it is in Washington, DC, in 1916, where Cordell Hull, then a young Congressman from Tennessee, introduced plans for a permanent international trade congress.

Or, it could be in Geneva, Switzerland, where the League of Nations held economic conferences in 1921, 1923, 1927, and 1933 to develop conventions for negotiating rules prohibiting quantitative restrictions and lowering tariffs. Geneva is also the birthplace of the United Nations Economic and Social Council, founded in June 1945. Geneva also became the site of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), a provisional tariff agreement that grew into a trade organisation after 1949.

When it comes to the birth of the GATT/WTO architecture, a nice place to start could be Placentia Bay off the coast of Newfoundland where two leaders, one American and one British, with their large battleships signed an accord, the Atlantic Charter, just months before the United States would commit to joining the Allies in World War II. The Charter set grand principles for a lend-lease agreement that included a commitment for both sides to meet and for the “elimination of all forms of discriminatory treatment in international commerce, and to the reduction of tariffs and other trade barriers.” Of course, the United States had already spent years working on draft rules, which the State Department finally distributed for comments in 1944 as a suggested charter for an international organisation.

Often, we understand the initiation of the global trading system as marked by Anglo-American relations. But, in truth, the plan for a multilateral rules-based system would not look like how we know it today had it not been for the Canadians’ urging to foster a “multilateral” (not bilateral in this case) set of discussions for post-war international commerce. Or Australia’s keen interest in prioritising positive action for full employment, or India’s efforts to form its identity beyond the British shadow and secure industrial development. The rules-based trading system formed over time, with growing numbers of trading partners' interests and values.

Why does it matter that Greer cited Bretton Woods and not Geneva, New York, London, or Havana? There is no mention of the attempt to design an International Trade Organization (ITO), the complement to the institutions designed to address international stability of monetary and financial matters. And trade was certainly discussed at Bretton Woods –– but it is not where the WTO was “made.” Despite Greer’s claims, the ITO/GATT did not ‘reject[] tariffs as a legitimate tool of public policy.’ The negotiations reveal a United States quite aware of the value of reciprocal openness, seeking to liberalise trade over time, to reduce border measures in cooperation with other trading partners, and even where restrictive policies were required, aiming for equitable allocation of necessary supplies.

Greer moves through the WTO rounds of negotiation as an experiment gone wrong –– presuming government officials from 1918 to 1994 never considered supply chain resilience, job security, over-production, or short supply when fostering international commerce in pursuing economic integration. But U.S. officials tasked with these negotiations did consider these issues and addressed them when coordinating with trading partners. Greer proclaims success in the United States’ tariff buyouts as securing ‘more market access than it had in years’, but you can see with Global Trade Alert’s country scorecards what tariff advantages are truly gained and lost.

In the end, Greer misses the point about history. Appreciating history is to understand the sacrifices, compromises, the recalibration of concessions, and the two steps forward and three steps back that occurred repeatedly between 1919 and 2025. The multilateral trading system is not one moment or one person. Cooperation is not a game. It is a relationship that takes time to develop.

One state cannot declare itself the maker of the global order. The WTO cannot be made or unmade by the rule-breaking of one Member. That said, it is how other Members perceive, justify, rationalise, accept, and repeat those breaks. If it’s a new era, then it is so because everyone in the room accepts it as such.