The writer is fellow for trade policy at the Council on Foreign Relations

In early August, Jamieson Greer, the US’s lead trade negotiator, declared that a new system of global trade had taken shape. Naming it after the Turnberry resort in Scotland where the US-EU tariff deal was struck, he claimed that Donald Trump’s approach has finally delivered the success in reforming the global trading system that has eluded past presidents. But what was achieved exactly? The administration has fallen far short of its goal for “90 deals in 90 days”. As for the handful of so-called deals that have been made, they are scant on details. Greer himself admits that deals with the EU, UK, Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam account for 40 per cent of US trade. What he fails to mention is that agreements with the top three US trading partners — Canada, Mexico, and China — have yet to be made. 

Even if you take what has been announced so far at face value — reductions in tariffs, co-operation on non-tariff barriers and promises by foreign partners to invest in the US — these deals are less substantial than Greer claims and have yet to produce real economic results. They are also a far cry from the massive market opening that was achieved over decades of sustained trade negotiations and which led to the system we have today.