The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2019

36 JULY-AUGUST 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL multilateralism, prefers to approach issues bilaterally in the belief that American dominance is so great we can leverage the behav- ior we want from the other party. That worked with South Korea, worked up to a point with Mexico and Canada, and may well work with Japan. But it does not appear to be working with either the European Union or China, both of which are bigger than we are. Size matters in the global economy, and the U.S. footprint continues to shrink. In the case of China, this is a particularly important missed opportunity. Historically, China has been uncomfortable being the outlier, and joint efforts by Western nations have gener- ally been more successful in changing Chinese behavior than individual ones. That makes even more sense now, since other nations, notably in the E.U., have begun to show higher levels of concern about China’s policies, suggesting they are ripe for coalition building. However, aside from a useful effort to develop a trilateral (U.S.-E.U.-Japan) paper on redefining subsidies in the World Trade Organization, there has been little effort so far to bring other nations together to act in concert. In the end, that may prove a fatal mistake. Building a coali- tion does not simply mean persuading others to make the same demarches to the Chinese government that we have made. It also means building or strengthening institutions that give meaning to the open, rules-based trading systemWestern nations have supported since the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement. That is what the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership were really about: creating structures that would stand for, and enforce, common rules based on openness, transparency and sound science—which other nations would have to respect if they wanted access to the markets covered by those agreements. Since both sets of signatories represent large consumer markets, China would have a significant incentive to adhere to their rules and perhaps ultimately join the agreements. Coalition building also implies a recognition that the real commercial battleground with China is neither here nor there, but in third countries where the playing field is more level. Pursu- ing more open markets in China is a noble exercise that deserves to be undertaken, but governments doing it need to be realistic about the prospects for success, particularly in the short term. They also need to focus more of their resources on competing in other countries that are more open to their efforts. The reality of modern competition is that if one is in a race, there are only two ways to win: run faster or trip the opponent. The Trump administration’s policy, as well as much of the ensu- ing congressional and public debate, has focused on the latter. But the surer path to success is the former. n