When Josh Hawley Overplays His Hand

“But that is no reason to allow Senator Hawley to misrepresent history in the service of a political narrative that will cause even greater damage to an international system that is already under immense strain.”

In a recent speech on the Senate floor, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley echoed President Donald Trump’s aggrieved insistence that the international system that the United States built after World War II (and expanded after the Cold War) has actually been hobbling American growth and prosperity for decades. Senator Hawley focused on the World Trade Organization (WTO), arguing that the organization has been “enabling and empowering the rise of an imperial China,” while punishing the United States with unfair rulings on trade disputes and oppressive restrictions on American industry. This led Senator Hawley to conclude that the United States should withdraw from the WTO altogether.

An American withdrawal from the WTO would be an economic disaster. It would open the door to higher tariffs (imposed on and by the United States); remove the United States from an organization that encompasses 164 countries and 98 percent of global trade; give the United States less say in the implementation of policies on issues like dispute settlement and trade monitoring; and inflict a massive economic blow on American consumers and companies alike. However, while there has been plenty of criticism of Senator Hawley’s speech on economic grounds, it is important to take a look at its broader context, particularly the Senator’s attitude toward the use of American force over the past 30 years.

Senator Hawley condemns what he describes as a naive “dream to remake the world” after the Cold War: “Western leaders…wanted a single liberal market to support a single, liberal international order that would bring peace in our time.” He continues: “That peace never arrived. Instead, these new Wilsonians embroiled the United States in conflict after conflict, war after war, for decades.”