Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gives a thumbs up as he arrives on Parliament Hill the morning after an agreement was reached on a new trade deal with Mexico and the U.S.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang
The relief that the U.S. didn’t make things even worse for Canada in the new NAFTA should be tempered by the realization that the moment of reckoning hasn’t passed; it’s only been postponed.
Chinese President Xi Jinping on a state visit to Pretoria ahead of the summit.
EPA
With international trade facing its greatest threat in decades, this club of China, Brazil, Russia, South Africa and India will have much to say about it.
EPA-EFE/Aleksandar Plavevski
While the US gets protectionist, China is working to establish itself as a leader in global trade rules.
China is Australia’s largest trading partner.
AAP
Eighty years ago, we were just as scared of the Japanese buying our assets as we are of the Chinese today. So what does this say about the future of Australia in the Asia-Pacific region?
EPA/Kyoshi Ota
Seven world leaders with axes to grind are preparing to sit round one table. Sparks will fly.
A finished steel coil is marked with its information by a worker at a mill in Farrell, Pennsylvania.
Reuters/Aaron Josefczyk
President Trump’s new tariffs suggest he doesn’t understand why American steel and aluminum have been hurt in the first place.
Bush, seen here in 2006, revoked his steel tariffs less than two years after imposing them in 2002.
Reuters/Jason Reed
President Trump slapped steep tariffs on steel imports, echoing protectionist measures taken by Bush in 2002.
There’s a reason investors don’t like trade wars.
AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein
President Trump says ‘trade wars are good,’ but history tells a very different story.
China controls 50% of the global steel industry but doesn’t export much to America.
AAP
China supplies just 2% of America’s steel, while Canada and Europe have sizeable shares and Australian steel producers depend on access to US markets.
Economic history suggests Trump’s ‘America First’ trade policies will put the U.S. last.
Reuters/Kevin Lamarque
The president’s tariffs on steel and China mirror the misguided trade policies that helped precipitate the Great Depression.
Trump has made pushing protectionism since the campaign.
AP Photo/Chris Carlson
The idea that the US is historically a free trading country is a myth. Here’s why that’s a good thing.
Australian Trade Minister Steve Ciobo (right) with Peruvian Foreign Commerce Minister Eduardo Ferreyros after signing a free trade agreement.
AAP
Australia recently signed a free trade agreement with Peru and more are on the way. At the same time it is part of a global trend of stealth protectionism among developed countries.
US President Donald Trump in 2017 and George W. Bush in 2008.
White House/Wikipedia
On March 1, Donald Trump imposed a series of steel and aluminum tariffs. To understand their potential impact, it’s instructive to look at what happened after George W. Bush enacted similar measures in 2002.
Most of the growing number of jobs in the solar industry have more to do with maintaining and installing panels than manufacturing them.
only_kim/Shutterstock.com
The Trump administration can boost domestic solar panel manufacturing without slapping duties on all imports.
Lord Macartney’s first meeting with the Qianlong emperor in 1793.
"A study of History", Arnold Toynbee
What can we learn from the 19th-century Qing dynasty?
Manufacturing still receives 80% of net government assistance, largely due to the remaining small levels of tariff assistance, plus some budget measures.
Dean Lewins/AAP
Under current government policy we are penalising the sector of the economy where there is the largest proportion of existing employment and the best prospects for future growth.
via shutterstock.com
May’s government is evoking arguments made by the early 20th-century tariff reform campaign of Joseph Chamberlain.
Sparks fly: workers produce steel at a small plant in Shenyang, northeast China.
EPA/MARK
Politicians in Europe, the US and the UK have blamed steel industry woes on artificially cheap imports.
Will Trump’s America lose out on the next big thing in business?
Blair Gable/Reuters
Mexico and Canada are about to turn medical cannabis into North America’s most lucrative new market.
During the US presidential election campaign, Donald Trump blamed NAFTA for US job losses.
Tracie Van Auken/EPA
There’s ample space to renegotiate some terms from the original agreement that would improve social welfare across the region.