The world gets scarier

Mr Trump's actions on trade, foreign policy and global public goods pose a new kind of threat to the liberal international economic order

A year ago I wrote a piece (A scary new world?, Business Standard, June 19, 2017) on the new world ushered in by Donald Trump in the first five months of his presidency of the United States. In it I argued that the 70 years following the Second World War saw the rise and dominance of a liberal international economic order (LIEO) for trade, capital flows and some skilled labour, which helped drive the sustained expansion of world trade, cross-border capital flows and globalisation, which, in turn, were key ingredients for unprecedented world economic growth. Moreover, the LIEO was underpinned