I'm Dan Kurtz-Valen, and this is the Foreign Affairs Interview.
I think the natural inclination is to look back with nostalgia and say, okay,
when this administration's over, we're going to go back to the way things were before.
I don't think that's going to happen.
I think there's no going back.
The toothpaste is out of the tube.
And I think what we need to do is think through, okay,
what are the elements of the old system that should be preserved in some other form?
Where do we need to reform the system.
And where do we need to come up with new rules or new mechanisms altogether to take into account the lessons of the last 80 years and the lessons of this grand experiment?
Donald Trump has been railing against the global economic order from the start of his political career.
But in his second term as president, he has turned that critique into blistering action.
In just five months,
the trade war that started with his April tariffs has completely reshaped the global economy.
and struck at the very heart of the trade system that emerged after the end of the Cold War.
To Michael Froman, the diagnosis is terminal.
Froman, now the president of the Council on Foreign Relations,
which publishes foreign affairs, served as US trade representative in the Obama administration.
Even if pieces of the old order managed to survive,
he writes the new issue of foreign affairs, the damage is done.