You know, once upon a time — maybe even last year — the WTO ruling that the centerpiece of Trump& #39;s trade policy was illegitimate would have been considered major news. As it was, people barely noticed 1/ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/business/economy/wto-trade-china-trump.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/1...

Not disagreeing with media organization, btw: with the fate of democracy on the line, even trade specialists have a hard time focusing on other stuff. But this offers an occasion for brief nerdy thread on a problem I& #39;m having with textbook revision 2/

I& #39;ve been co-author of an intermediate textbook on international economics for many editions — I think we used stone axes to chisel out the first edition — and we& #39;ve always included a ch on political economy of trade policy, emphasizing the importance of special interests 3/

This chapter includes examples of policies that clearly reduced national income, but were adopted because they served particular well-connected groups. And you& #39;d think it would be easy to update to the Trump era, which is a golden age of crony capitalism 4/

But here& #39;s where I& #39;m having trouble: to a first approximation, nobody wants the Trump trade war. A few US companies have benefited, but very little grassroots demand from either workers or corporations. By and large, this whole thing reflects Trump& #39;s personal obsessions 5/

So how do I update the stories about catfish farmers or sugar producers? "Peter Navarro is a strange person" wouldn& #39;t be teachable material for an econ textbook even if the goal weren& #39;t to make it as apolitical as possible. So, struggling with the updates 6/