Free traders wax nostalgic for bygone globalized era

Trade hawks are sounding wistful for the period of intense corporate trade liberalization from which both the Biden and Trump administrations have increasingly been moving away.

It was one around which a big business consensus had formed over the last several decades and the move toward a less free trade focused chapter has alarmed some of its original architects.

Speaking at an online event on Wednesday, former Ohio senator and U.S. Trade Representative during the Bush administration Rob Portman took issue with recent positions put forward by key Biden administration officials and said the free trade agenda was having “trouble.”

“We’re having so much trouble right now moving the trade agenda forward,” Portman said, while acknowledging the 2020 enactment of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), the update to the seminal NAFTA deal that ushered in the modern period of international business agreements lumped together under the term “free trade.”