Atlantic Council Chairman Jon M. Huntsman, Jr. writes for the Wall Street Journal on why global trade will be more important – and more complicated – thirty years from now:
Two years after I was born, President John F. Kennedy created the Office of the Special Trade Representative, a brief forerunner to today’s U.S. trade representative. Expanded exports and open markets were central to our economic-security efforts to reconstruct Europe and Japan and keep lower-income countries free from communism.
In calling for a new round of global negotiations following the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, President Kennedy stated, “Our efforts to maintain the leadership of the Free World thus rest, in the final analysis, on our success in this undertaking.” He succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, with a new era of globalization coming after the end of the Cold War aided by 3.5 billion new customers entering the marketplace.