Josh Hawley: Abolish the World Trade Organization in Wake of Coronavirus

Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) says the World Trade Organization (WTO) should be abolished in the wake of the Chinese coronavirus.

In an op-ed for the New York Times, Hawley credits the WTO with helping to empower “China’s rise” while weakening American workers:

But in the early 1990s, with America’s principal adversary gone, Western policymakers were in a messianic frame of mind. President George H.W. Bush promised a “new world order” of “open borders, open trade … and open minds,” a new international system based on liberal values to bring peace to the world. He and other internationalists wanted a new economic system to match. [Emphasis added]

Take the World Trade Organization. Its mandate was to promote free trade, but the organization instead allowed some nations to maintain trade barriers and protectionist workarounds, like China, while preventing others from defending themselves, like the United States. Foreign agriculture won concession after concession, while American farmers struggled to get fair access to markets.Meanwhile, the W.T.O. required American workers to compete against Chinese forced labor but did next to nothing to stop Chinese theft of American intellectual property and products. [Emphasis added]

Under the W.T.O.’s auspices, capital and goods moved across borders easier than before, no doubt, but so did jobs. And too many jobs left America’s borders for elsewhere. As factories closed, workers suffered, from small towns to the urban core. Inflation-adjusted, working wages stagnated and upward mobility flatlined. [Emphasis added]

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