Rutgers Business Insight: The current trade war and thoughts on the Opium Wars of the 1840s

[@yogeshkumar1]

Felt like I got transported to Farrokh's class after so many years! One of my fav teachers!

[@jonjones971]

Thank you very much Prof Farrokh ...as always a pleasure to see/hear you ....

[@philkeyes2620]

Wow! Watching that I felt like I was in macroeconomics class again... and easy to follow too! Very interesting segment. As for trade, I'm intently watching this "posturing" build with such high stakes at risk, but... we can not continue on this course of imbalanced trade terms indefinitely. We can't have free trade without fair trade. I'm pondering if much of this imbalance in trade terms is still a remnant of beneficial policies that lingered after post WWII European and Asian reconstruction mindset that spawned the Marshall Plan that helped stimulate economic recovery of a devastated Europe. Earlier US dominance in manufacturing and technology is now more on par with our major trading partners. Trade policy intent now appears to be moving in the direction of gaining equality for the "terms of trade" (tariff and non-tariff barriers to entry), although the drama needed for the leveraging of negotiations certainly is uncomfortable, it does seem that conditions to entice our trading partners to consider this is becoming more promising, if for no other reason than the downside, while bad for the US... is far worse for our trading partners. Like your "Opium Wars" analogy, I see much in the historical context and impact of how WWII has shaped and lingers in economic policy and impact in global trade and geopolitics.