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Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Opinion - What globalists get wrong about free trade
Since at least the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, major media outlets have decried the impending end of globalization. These lamentations have only accelerated since the Trump administration declared April 2 'Liberation Day,' with our trading counterparties' unfair practices to be summarily addressed through increased and partially reciprocal duties (along with a minimum tariff level). To hear the media tell it, such tariffs are the death knell for a beneficial global trading order and will immiserate billions. But such valedictories for the end of globalization advance a straw-man fiction about what is now supposedly lost: namely, that President Trump's policies contravene an agreed framework whereby goods, capital and labor move across national boundaries in a mostly unencumbered manner. If one believes in the merits of free trade and cross-border capital flows, it is essential not to confuse the ideal with the real. In truth, there have always been (often significant) friction and costs associated with such movements. Today's so-called free trade regime recalls Western support for Soviet communism, snarling 'real communism has never been tried' in defense of its myriad failures. Love it or hate it, what exists today is hardly real free trade. If what we have today isn't it, what does free trade closer to its Platonic ideal look like? This notion, that trade conditions are rarely wholly free or unfree, also confuses the media. The reality is that trading conditions sit uneasily along a continuum, and relatively free trade only occurs under certain conditions. These include (among others): Mutually agreed-upon rules for international commerce, consistently applied or at least generally observed, allowing for relatively open and reciprocal market access; Exemptions for strategic industries, a form of insurance for nations, insulating them from being caught short in a subsequent conflict with trading partners; Reliable cross-border supply chains, allowing for the disaggregation of production into its constituent parts (trading resource control for cost efficiency) and An ideologically unipolar historical moment, or a multi-polar world in which international trade largely occurs within the poles. These and other trade-friendly conditions were largely obtained in the decades leading up to the First World War, and in the 20 or so years following the end of the Cold War. While a world war is an obvious culprit ending an earlier era of globalization, what explains its current travails? A rules-based trading order can withstand certain restrictions (tariffs, regulations, quotas) — in fact, protecting strategic sectors demands some of them. But excessive use, along with outright cheating — subsidies, intellectual property theft and currency manipulation, as in the case of China — gives rise to a prisoner's dilemma with suboptimal outcomes. Similarly, the extended supply chains that proliferated over the last 30 years assumed the only national interest that mattered was economic advancement. Consider the terms made fashionable over the last three decades: 'a borderless world,' 'global citizens,' 'the end of history' and 'soft power.' The disaggregation of business models previously housed under a single corporate roof never anticipated revisionist challenges to Pax Americana, such as the retrograde gunboat diplomacy of China's Belt and Road Initiative, much less the rise of transnational terrorist organizations disrupting commerce and producing failed states. Moreover, the unipolar moment has ended. As China, under the rule of the Communist Party, displaced the Soviet Union as our primary geopolitical adversary, its admission to the World Trade Organization in 2001 conferred upon it a degree of economic leverage over the United States that Joseph Stalin could only have dreamed of. The return of history, with not only China but Russia, Turkey and others asserting spheres of influence and advancing parochial interests while embedded within a global economic system and multilateral institutions, further vitiates unfettered trade and capital movements. Failing to understand that globalization — the mutually beneficial interdependence and integration among nations, entailing a largely unrestricted flow of goods, capital, information and people — only flourishes under certain conditions, is only half of what the media and establishment elites get wrong. The other is the fetishization of globalism as an ideology. One can support globalization without being a globalist. Free trade and capital flows do not themselves comprise a belief system, but are rather a means to an end: actualizing individuals' aspirations and the nations that represent them. Free trade is the handmaiden of liberty, not vice versa. Reifying trade at the expense of other liberal values risks perverse outcomes; offshoring a nation's pharmaceutical production capacity to potentially belligerent nations is but one example. Another danger in globalism as an ideology is that of falling prey to historical determinism. Seeing deepening global integration as inevitable presents several risks. Believing it impervious threatens underinvestment in its sustenance (see the collapse of the WTO's Doha Round); competing objectives such as national self-determination and defense of borders may also be subordinated to globalism's tenets, destabilizing the very nations seeking to benefit from globalization. The proposed Trump tariff regime is not the full-throated attack on a functioning trading order critics make it out to be. To acknowledge this is not to defend blindly the administration's policies. Tariffs have their place as leverage against trading counterparties with onerous trade restrictions of their own. They are also useful to support strategic sectors in an increasingly dangerous world. What tariffs won't do is revive a rust-belt economy, which isn't coming back. Comparative advantage, alas, remains undefeated. Nor should tariffs be sold to the public as a governmental revenue-generator while incumbent income, sales and other tax regimes remain firmly in place. Globalization improves lives and should be promoted. Free trade and capital movements have consistently shown themselves, when the requisite conditions are present, to be mutually beneficial. How these benefits are distributed and whether the unchecked movement of people across borders is similarly beneficial are more complex matters. But the promotion of globalism as an inviolate creed, either for its own sake or as a counterpoint to 'America First' policies, fails to appreciate that globalization cannot be summoned by magical thinking and that it is the servant of liberty, not its master. Richard J. Shinder is the founder and managing partner of Theatine Partners, a financial consultancy. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
5 days ago
- Business
- The Hill
What globalists get wrong about free trade
Since at least the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, major media outlets have decried the impending end of globalization. These lamentations have only accelerated since the Trump administration declared April 2 ' Liberation Day,' with our trading counterparties' unfair practices to be summarily addressed through increased and partially reciprocal duties (along with a minimum tariff level). To hear the media tell it, such tariffs are the death knell for a beneficial global trading order and will immiserate billions. But such valedictories for the end of globalization advance a straw-man fiction about what is now supposedly lost: namely, that President Trump's policies contravene an agreed framework whereby goods, capital and labor move across national boundaries in a mostly unencumbered manner. If one believes in the merits of free trade and cross-border capital flows, it is essential not to confuse the ideal with the real. In truth, there have always been (often significant) friction and costs associated with such movements. Today's so-called free trade regime recalls Western support for Soviet communism, snarling 'real communism has never been tried' in defense of its myriad failures. Love it or hate it, what exists today is hardly real free trade. If what we have today isn't it, what does free trade closer to its Platonic ideal look like? This notion, that trade conditions are rarely wholly free or unfree, also confuses the media. The reality is that trading conditions sit uneasily along a continuum, and relatively free trade only occurs under certain conditions. These include (among others): Mutually agreed-upon rules for international commerce, consistently applied or at least generally observed, allowing for relatively open and reciprocal market access; Exemptions for strategic industries, a form of insurance for nations, insulating them from being caught short in a subsequent conflict with trading partners; Reliable cross-border supply chains, allowing for the disaggregation of production into its constituent parts (trading resource control for cost efficiency) and An ideologically unipolar historical moment, or a multi-polar world in which international trade largely occurs within the poles. These and other trade-friendly conditions were largely obtained in the decades leading up to the First World War, and in the 20 or so years following the end of the Cold War. While a world war is an obvious culprit ending an earlier era of globalization, what explains its current travails? A rules-based trading order can withstand certain restrictions (tariffs, regulations, quotas) — in fact, protecting strategic sectors demands some of them. But excessive use, along with outright cheating — subsidies, intellectual property theft and currency manipulation, as in the case of China — gives rise to a prisoner's dilemma with suboptimal outcomes. Similarly, the extended supply chains that proliferated over the last 30 years assumed the only national interest that mattered was economic advancement. Consider the terms made fashionable over the last three decades: 'a borderless world,' 'global citizens,' 'the end of history' and 'soft power.' The disaggregation of business models previously housed under a single corporate roof never anticipated revisionist challenges to Pax Americana, such as the retrograde gunboat diplomacy of China's Belt and Road Initiative, much less the rise of transnational terrorist organizations disrupting commerce and producing failed states. Moreover, the unipolar moment has ended. As China, under the rule of the Communist Party, displaced the Soviet Union as our primary geopolitical adversary, its admission to the World Trade Organization in 2001 conferred upon it a degree of economic leverage over the United States that Joseph Stalin could only have dreamed of. The return of history, with not only China but Russia, Turkey and others asserting spheres of influence and advancing parochial interests while embedded within a global economic system and multilateral institutions, further vitiates unfettered trade and capital movements. Failing to understand that globalization — the mutually beneficial interdependence and integration among nations, entailing a largely unrestricted flow of goods, capital, information and people — only flourishes under certain conditions, is only half of what the media and establishment elites get wrong. The other is the fetishization of globalism as an ideology. One can support globalization without being a globalist. Free trade and capital flows do not themselves comprise a belief system, but are rather a means to an end: actualizing individuals' aspirations and the nations that represent them. Free trade is the handmaiden of liberty, not vice versa. Reifying trade at the expense of other liberal values risks perverse outcomes; offshoring a nation's pharmaceutical production capacity to potentially belligerent nations is but one example. Another danger in globalism as an ideology is that of falling prey to historical determinism. Seeing deepening global integration as inevitable presents several risks. Believing it impervious threatens underinvestment in its sustenance (see the collapse of the WTO's Doha Round); competing objectives such as national self-determination and defense of borders may also be subordinated to globalism's tenets, destabilizing the very nations seeking to benefit from globalization. The proposed Trump tariff regime is not the full-throated attack on a functioning trading order critics make it out to be. To acknowledge this is not to defend blindly the administration's policies. Tariffs have their place as leverage against trading counterparties with onerous trade restrictions of their own. They are also useful to support strategic sectors in an increasingly dangerous world. What tariffs won't do is revive a rust-belt economy, which isn't coming back. Comparative advantage, alas, remains undefeated. Nor should tariffs be sold to the public as a governmental revenue-generator while incumbent income, sales and other tax regimes remain firmly in place. Globalization improves lives and should be promoted. Free trade and capital movements have consistently shown themselves, when the requisite conditions are present, to be mutually beneficial. How these benefits are distributed and whether the unchecked movement of people across borders is similarly beneficial are more complex matters. But the promotion of globalism as an inviolate creed, either for its own sake or as a counterpoint to 'America First' policies, fails to appreciate that globalization cannot be summoned by magical thinking and that it is the servant of liberty, not its master.
Finextra
27-05-2025
- Business
- Finextra
Platonic taps GenAI to modernise capital markets workflows
Platonic today announced a research collaboration with MIT's Geospatial Data Center, focused on advancing generative AI capabilities to modernize financial market infrastructures. 0 This ambitious initiative will evaluate Generative AI tools and techniques to identify suitable models and prompting strategies for financial asset workflows. This effort will focus on AI-driven smart contract creation and end-to-end asset servicing. The collaboration combines Platonic's cutting-edge blockchain infrastructure expertise with MIT's Geospatial Data Center research leadership in generative AI. 'At Platonic, we're building the infrastructure for autonomous, intelligent markets-where assets are programmable and intelligent," said Violet Abtahi, Founder and CEO of Platonic. 'This initiative is one part of that vision, focused on applying generative AI to smart contract creation and asset servicing. Our collaboration with MIT's Geospatial Data Center accelerates our mission to research how to modernize financial infrastructure and unlock the power of a truly decentralized economy.' By automating contract generation and simplifying operational workflows, this initiative aims to increase transparency, reduce costs, and enable smarter, data-driven decision-making across capital markets. 'Financial institutions have long struggled to modernize legacy systems,' said Abel Sanchez, Executive Director, MIT's Geospatial Data Center. 'Leveraging blockchain and generative AI offers a practical and tangible path forward—moving capital markets from incremental promises to real digital transformation.' This collaboration is a major step toward Platonic's broader vision for autonomous finance-a future where assets are intelligent, self-executing, and able to interact across a global, interoperable, digital ecosystem.
CNET
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CNET
10 of the Best Apple TV Plus Shows You're Probably Not Watching
I didn't know what to expect when I clicked play on Platonic. Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne have co-starred in other projects together, but their delightfully oddball dynamic in this one stands out. The story follows two long-time friends who reconnect in their 40s only to find that, even though they live very different lives, they share common midlife struggles of trying to figure out where they fit in this rapidly changing world. It's also nice to see a non-romantic exploration of a friendship between a man and a woman. Contrary to what When Harry Met Sally said, it is possible.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Seth Rogen on 'Specifically' Writing Dave Franco's Role in ‘The Studio' for the Actor
Seth Rogen was very particular when it came to writing and crafting the characters in The Studio. The star and co-creator of the Apple TV+ series recently shared with People why he 'specifically' wrote Dave Franco's role and multi-episode storyline for the actor. In the show, Franco plays a fictionalized version of himself as a Hollywood action star and wild party animal. More from The Hollywood Reporter Dave Franco, Alison Brie, WME Hit With Idea Theft Lawsuit Over 'Together' 'The Studio' Gets a Sequel: Seth Rogen Comedy Renewed at Apple TV+ On the Set of Seth Rogen's 'The Studio' as a "Oner" Comes to Life: "It Creates a Feeling of Stress" 'Honestly, there were very few people that could have filled the roles that the people had filled because we really specifically were catering the stories to certain traits that celebrities have,' Rogen said of creating the 21 Jump Street actor's storyline. The Studio follows a legacy Hollywood movie studio striving to survive in a world where it is increasingly difficult for art and business to live together, with Rogen playing the new head of the fictional Continental Studios. The series has featured several celebrity cameos, as well as characters inspired by real-life industry notables. 'With Dave, it's like, who do you believe would be in a Ron Howard movie? It's a pretty dramatic movie, who could do that? But also, we knew that he would come back and do this truly ridiculous, stupid thing later in the season,' he added of the latest episode, which saw Franco partying at a Las Vegas event hosted by Rogen's character ahead of the studio's big CinemaCon presentation. Rogen and Franco's longtime friendship stemmed from the Platonic actor's former friendship with his older brother, James Franco, whom he worked with for two decades after starring in 1999's Freaks and Geeks together. However, the duo had a falling out after allegations of sexual misconduct were made against James, seemingly ending their relationship. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 22 of the Most Shocking Character Deaths in Television History A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise 'Yellowstone' and the Sprawling Dutton Family Tree, Explained
