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‘Most People Don’t Know What a Tariff Is’

The University of Chicago trade expert Robert Gulotty says the global trading system will likely survive, though it has never before had to fend off the country that built it.

By , a deputy news editor at Foreign Policy.
Shipping containers sit stacked at Qingdao Port in China on May 28.
Shipping containers sit stacked at Qingdao Port in China on May 28.
Shipping containers sit stacked at Qingdao Port in China on May 28. Han Jiajun/VCG/Getty Images

In the wake of World War II, the United States forged an international trading order meant to break down forever the trade barriers erected in the 1930s that exacerbated the Great Depression. Today, like few times in its seven-plus decades of existence, that order is under threat, most notably from the country that built it. Foreign Policy spoke with the University of Chicago political scientist Robert Gulotty, an expert on international trade, about how serious the threat is, the future of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade wars, and how to help those whom globalization has left behind.

Keith Johnson is a deputy news editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @KFJ_FP

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