Donald Trump was elected US president on a platform of anti-globalism and, in particular, on a promise to change or withdraw from America’s existing trade agreements and kill the ones in the pipeline.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership was already in trouble before the election; Trump’s victory seems to have given it the coup de grâce. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, meanwhile, now looks set to be stillborn.
That is, as far as US participation goes. What the American turn inwards means for the rest of the world is an open question. There are those who think the loss of US leadership on international economic integration will embolden protectionism elsewhere — especially as it comes on the heels of the protectionist vandalism that is Brexit — and sap the will of those who want to keep their economies open or even open them further. They will point to Europe, whose free-trade deal with Canada was passed by a whisker last month, and that only conditionally.