The Trade Weapon: How Weaponizing Trade Threatens Growth, Public Health, and the Climate Transition

This timely book describes how governments use trade policy to achieve noneconomic ends. Western governments have used trade restrictions to punish cross-border aggression, such as Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and human rights violations, such as China’s abuse of its Uyghur minority. They also apply trade restrictions in the name of reducing domestic dependence on fragile global supply chains, improving self-sufficiency in the production of items deemed critical to national security, and encouraging advances in science that serve the environment and public health. But Heydon argues that trade weapons hurt those who wield them and threaten the vitality of the global trading system. What’s more, the objectives that countries aim to achieve with trade weapons can be reached in better ways: investing in the resilience of global supply chains, refuting spurious national security arguments for self-sufficiency, and taking direct action to achieve public health and environmental goals. The author is perhaps least convincing when he suggests that a more effective way of getting North Korea and Russia to change their ways is to rely less on trade sanctions and more on positive diplomatic overtures.