Countries are navigating a delicate balance in the face of ongoing trade tensions, with nations like Canada and Europe strengthening ties while competing with the US and China.
Nazak Nikakhtar, Wiley Law partner and former trade official under the Trump administration, explains that while nations may initially retaliate, a collective path forward is likely since the economic pain of these trade disputes will become unsustainable.
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Talk to me about how you see other countries either banding together or coming apart in this moment. The EU this morning adopting tariffs on 21 billion pounds of US goods in a metals dispute. Do you anticipate the EU, even China, other nations coming together in this moment to fight the US, or do you think that the Trump administration is going to be able to put pressure on other nations to ostracize China even further?
I genuinely don't think that the countries are just going to flock to China because they just see the problems with China, and they've been seeing, at least for the last decade, right, the problem with increasing trade relationships with China. So I don't think that that's going to happen. I think right now we're going to be in a position where countries are just going to fend for themselves. Um, they're going to try to sort of improve trade relationships with one another, like Canada and in Europe, but at the end of the day, um, we all need each other's markets, and um, you know, there's going to be a period where where these tit-for-tat measures are going to continue, but I think at the end of the day, every single country, I think including the United States, is going to want to better integrate their supply chains and really frankly reduce their barriers to trade, because this this situation, the status quo cannot continue. And I think we're going to get to a better place, and I think we're going to get to a better place, you know, within this year, uh, probably in the fall. But right now, I think, um, every country's going to flex its muscles to show their constituents at home that they're going to fight back until the pain gets too much. And then I think they're going to work on with the United States and collectively on a path forward.
