Tyler Cowen, Columnist

Trump Tariffs Are Just a Blip in the March of Free Trade

Here are three reasons to be optimistic.

June 8, 2018 at 10:00 AM UTC

Tyler Cowen is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a professor of economics at George Mason University and host of the Marginal Revolution blog.

Dawn will come again.
Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg

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Is the age of free trade coming to an end? It sure feels that way, with the U.S. levying tariffs against its allies, the Chinese not budging from their mercantilist system, Brexit on track, and authoritarian governments on the rise. The good news, however, lies outside the realm of politics: The long-run trend is one of greater interconnectedness, at least for traditional goods and services.

Here’s why I am still (mostly) an optimist about the future of trade.