It’s been a busy few weeks for the trade-policy naming industry. We’ve had a Franco-German “non-paper,” a Milwaukee “comprehensive framework,” and a “joint ministerial statement” bringing together 15 economies around an initiative championed by the office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) during the U.S. G20 presidency. Structural excess capacity, overproduction, global macroeconomic imbalances, industrial shocks, non-market policies and practices, or what some of the best trade nerds call overcapacity—the terminology alone has kept trade officials and experts occupied for years. Add this to the anxiety surrounding possible imminent action in USTR’s Section 301 investigation under the remarkably expansive definition of “acts, policies, and practices of certain economies relating to structural excess capacity and…
