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The upside of multilateral trade deals

Apr 18, 2018
President Donald Trump has again rejected the idea of the U.S. joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership. That’s the multilateral trade pact the Obama administration hammered out. Yesterday, the president tweeted that he still doesn’t like the TPP. He added that bilateral trade agreements, between the U.S. and just one other country, are more “efficient” and “profitable.” […]

The trade war is over (I lost)

Apr 9, 2018
The president says they're easy, but FiveThirtyEight's simulator gave me a different experience.
A worker standing at a dock of a port in Shanghai on March 22, 2018.
JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/Getty Images

Trump’s trade wars tweet theory

Mar 2, 2018
President Donald Trump tweeted that “trade wars are good, and easy to win,” adding that “when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don’t trade any more-we win big. It’s easy!” So, if you play that out a bit, looking at one of the countries we currently trade with, […]