Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., is calling for an end to the World Trade Organization.
His comments came in a column posted by The New York Times on Tuesday.
“The coronavirus emergency is not only a public health crisis,” he said. “With 30 million Americans unemployed, it is also an economic crisis. And it has exposed a hard truth about the modern global economy: it weakens American workers and has empowered China’s rise. That must change.
“The global economic system as we know it is a relic; it requires reform, top to bottom. We should begin with one of its leading institutions, the World Trade Organization.
“We should abolish it.”
Hawley said the WTO was set up 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."
He noted foreign agriculture won repeated concessions, while U.S. farmers “struggled to get fair access to markets.”
And, he said, the WTO required U.S. workers to compete against forced labor in China and did nothing to halt the theft of American intellectual property and products by the Chinese.
“Enough is enough,” he said. “The WTO should be abolished, and along with it, the new model global economy. The quest to turn the world into a liberal order of democracies was always misguided.”
He added: “This is an opportunity to build something better, a better international order and a better economy for a better future for America.”
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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