Thailand’s Tariff Struggle Exposes Death of Global Trade Consensus
The dance never ends. Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Pichai Chunhavajira, fresh off a trip to Washington D. C., reports back from Seoul on stalled tariff negotiations with the United States. Progress was made, feedback was gathered, but “no final agreement was reached.” Khaosod. This seemingly mundane diplomatic dispatch is not just about tariffs; it’s a flickering neon sign pointing to a much darker landscape: the death of the post-Cold War consensus on global trade and the resurgence of a world where power, not principles, dictates terms.
The details are familiar. Thailand, facing a potential 36% tariff on its exports to the US, scrambles to appease a protectionist Washington. The Finance Minister met with a flurry of officials, including US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, and business leaders like Charles Freeman of the US Chamber of Commerce. This is the ritual. But the signal, much louder than the noise of diplomacy, is the fact that these individual pleas are even necessary.
“I want to reaffirm that Thailand’s working group’s position is that any agreement reached must be sustainable and mutually beneficial — what we call a Win-Win Solution. While negotiations haven’t reached final results, we must continue working together to achieve maximum benefits for both countries,” he stated.
What’s revealed in the Thai official’s statement is that countries have to ask to play a game where the rules, until recently, were presumed universal. This is, to use legal scholar Anne-Marie Slaughter’s term, “lawlessness,” but on the international stage. It’s the substitution of power for principles. But there’s something more: It’s also the outsourcing of global governance to individual nations, specifically, the ones with the biggest stick. The fact that Thailand needs to scramble, and the US feels empowered to individually rate its tariff worthiness, lays bare the fragile state of the global trading system.
The collapse of the Doha Round of WTO negotiations is a crucial prelude to understanding our current reality. Intended to lower trade barriers globally, especially for developing nations, Doha collapsed due to disagreements over agricultural subsidies and market access. But Doha’s failure was itself a symptom of a deeper malaise: the rising power of domestic lobbies in wealthy nations, capable of blocking deals that, while beneficial to the world, threatened their narrow interests. The failure left a vacuum, one increasingly filled by individualized agreements dictated by the political whims of dominant players. Trump’s stated intention to issue tariff notices starting August 1st underscores this shift. It abandons multilateralism for a “my way or the highway” approach. This isn’t just about economics; it’s about the erosion of norms and the dismantling of the idea that international rules should bind even the most powerful.
Economist Dani Rodrik, in his work on globalization and its discontents, has long argued that deeper international economic integration requires a balancing act. Too much integration, he argues, can undermine domestic social contracts and create a backlash against globalization itself. But Rodrik’s warning has been twisted. The backlash isn’t necessarily against globalization itself, but against a system that promised shared prosperity but delivered concentrated gains and widespread insecurity. We see that backlash manifesting in the rise of populism and protectionism across the globe. The result is a world where agreements are more about capitulation to power than achieving true mutual benefit.
Looking ahead, these individual trade dramas will continue to play out, but they mask a deeper, more troubling trend. The reliance on raw power in international relations risks triggering a dangerous cycle, where every nation feels compelled to protect its own interests at the expense of global cooperation. But the real danger is not just economic; it’s the unraveling of the fragile web of trust and cooperation that underpins the entire international order. In a world grappling with climate change, pandemics, and economic instability, a retreat into narrow self-interest is a luxury we simply can’t afford. The Thai minister’s negotiation outcomes may be temporary setbacks, but they should serve as urgent alarms, signaling a deeper crisis in the very architecture of global cooperation, a crisis we have only begun to confront.
