By Ed Ballard, Jason Douglas, and Jon Emont
“Giant subsidies and rising protectionism are upending decades of free trade. Smaller countries, from the U.K. to Singapore, are getting left behind.”
Brexit proponents said the U.K. could strike bilateral trade deals with other countries and double down on globalization. Since then, momentum for free trade has stalled and now appears to be in retreat.
“Back during the Brexit vote, nobody had any idea that we’d see a resurgence of industrial policy in the U.S.,” said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School.
Now, the U.K. government is facing calls from all corners of the country’s economy to respond to the interventionist turn in global economics with its own reinvigorated industrial strategy.
Quoted in: “The Economic Losers in the New World Order” by Ed Ballard, Jason Douglas, and Jon Emont, Wall Street Journal (14 August 2023).