 President Trump's action of increasing tariffs in these two sectors steel and aluminum will have a major impact on the global economy and there are worries now that they are going to be trade wars of the kind that happened in the 1930s when the US had unilaterally increased tariffs on products coming from his partner countries. Now you know in the 1930 when the stock market had just sort of crashed a year before the global economy was already in a tailspin and what happened after these tariffs were introduced in fact there was a legislation it was called the smooth holly tariff act. The smooth holly tariffs increased the level of protection by such an extent that the partner countries of the US actually retaliated and you know we are all of the view that the financial crisis then you know became a depression the great depression in 30s just because of this trade protectionism there was what we call the neighbor bigger than neighbor policies which was followed by the US and this actually happened. Already there are talks of rising protectionism now you know in the world economic forum has expressed this fear that protectionist tendencies are growing growing and on top of that now Trump has come and impose these tariffs and it will be it would not be right to just look at steel and tariffs as the only sectors which have are facing protectionist threats then in fact two other sectors one was washing machines and solar cells and modules where again US has taken action to block imports from his partner countries and there are other instruments of course these are WTO consistent instruments like anti-dumping action which have increased quite tremendously. So all in all it comes as a package of what we can clearly say that you know there are protectionist tendencies which now are getting manifest in the United States. So, how does it impact the global economy the I my sense is that global economy is just about coming back on track after 10 years you know after the recession the Great Recession will say in 2008 is just about coming back and then you have growth rates in the industrialized country the advanced countries are just looking up a little bit and WTO is also saying that trade is going to increase by almost you know 4% and this also happened last year and is going to be sustained. So, again for the first time in this decade that you are that we are talking in terms of a certain sustained recovery in terms of the trade growth rates. So, if you have these negative sentiments creeping in and there is already the case of European Union which has imposed tariffs on a number of agricultural products and then Harley Davidson and Jeans. So this situation could actually aggravate into a tit for tat policy which is not going to be good for the global economy. Let me give you one example why I think it is going to be much broader than just this fight between the US and the European Union like take for instance blue jeans. Now blue jeans is some is a is an American label is an American you know sort of sell sold by an American company. But the jeans are produced in the third world you know many countries you know April manufacturers are actually manufacturing these jeans. So, the impact of punitive tariff imposed by the European Union is actually going to be felt by these countries who are producing the jeans. So, if the profit margins of Levi's actually comes down they are going to push the manufacturer the small manufacturers in the developing countries even further. So, you know this could actually explode into a very ugly kind of a trade trade war kind of a situation. As of now Trump has excluded Canada and Mexico, but he has done it for strategic reasons he is negotiating the North American free to the agreement and he wants to use this as a leverage this exemption granted to Canada and Mexico as a leverage in the negotiations from for what he says would be a good NAFTA for Americans. So, we do not know how long Trump's patience is going to last and there are reports that the NAFTA negotiations are reaching their sort of a dead end and the Canada and Mexico have refused to listen to what the Americans are saying in terms of putting additional pressure on them to change certain critical areas of the existing NAFTA agreement. So, my expectations are that very soon this is going to these tariffs are going to be imposed also in Canada and Mexico which becomes a difficult situation. Now, what is in the other side of the picture? The other side of the picture really is that you know US has used this as a unilateral measure. Now, after the WTO came into existence in you know 1995, there has been a very clear understanding among all the WTO members that no country will use unilateral trade measures which is affecting any other WTO country WTO member. So, this is what Trump is doing and he imposed this tariffs in the name of national security. Now, in the WTO there are security exception that you can take you know and these exceptions relate typically to fissionable materials and all. But not to the kind of national security or the definition that has been used by the Americans right now to impose tariffs on steel. So, their definition of national security is anything that affects the American industry and affects jobs and you know incomes is going to be treated as something that is an attack on national security. Now you know this is a definition which is completely unacceptable under WTO. So, my short point is that Trump's measures are completely in violation with the WTO norms. The second issue that I would like to flag is that on the remedy that countries have. Now you know if there is a violation of WTO rules then the obvious step that countries must take is to go to the WTO and complain and lodge a complaint in the dispute settlement body saying that there is been this violation. Now and I think that you know all these countries who have been hit and India also is among the countries which are have been we have been exporting a you know large amount of steel to the United States. So, we are we should also be potentially affected by this measure. So I my take is that all the countries who have been affected they should together go to the WTO dispute settlement body and lodge complaints. I would say that you know they they should all together lodge a single complaint. But you know everyone should go and register you know their own individual complaints and later on it will get aggregated and it will be treated as a single complaint. But it is important for all countries to express their you know sort of resentment to this individually. Now you know the WTO dispute settlement body has a particular mechanism where initially in the first stage there is a panel process. So you have these three member panel the three judges who you know sort of adjudicate on a particular complaint gave a ruling and that ruling by the appellate body is actually appealable under the WTO laws rules. And this appeal then goes to the appellate body of the WTO. And the appellate body actually like is pretty much like our own court system. So you have a lower court which gives a ruling and then it goes to a higher court and goes into appeal in the higher court. Now the interesting thing about the WTO process is that the decision taken by an appellate body is final and binding and there is no other court of appeal. So you cannot actually like in the UN system you have a dispute you can go to the international court of justice but in the WTO you cannot actually do that. So all the options are exhausted in the appeal process itself and a country which is found to be in violation of the WTO laws is supposed to be immediately implementing the decision of the appellate body and bringing or kicking out the measure which is in violation of the WTO rules. Now a very interesting thing has happened in the appellate body. Appellate body has seven members and these are you know sort of members who are elected by the WTO members and they are chosen by consensus. So you know so even in people who have worked on these issues they are picked up and they are appointed on the appellate body. Now currently you have a situation where there are you know as against seven members you have only four members left and from last year you know there have been attempts by the WTO members to appoint new appellate body members but the US has vetoed this whole process. So in WTO all the decisions are taken by consensus. So it is a very difficult situation that you know you do not have enough appellate body members and you know in any appeal process you again need three appellate body members. In another six months of these four members who are still there in the appellate body one is going to retire. So you have you will just have three members and these three members are supposed to be sitting on the panels of every appeal that comes, now that is humanly impossible. So in a way I would say that US is trying to also you know undermine the existence of the WTO from inside and WTO's dispute settlement mechanism has played a very important role in you know sort of maintaining a certain amount of control over countries trying to use unilateral trade measures. So it has kept the countries under leash because WTO's dispute settlement mechanism is very strict. So now if the appellate body members are not appointed and then you know countries go to the dispute settlement body against the US and complain. There is a possibility that the whole process of dispute settlement will not work itself out because you do not have people who are going to be adjudicating and giving a final decision. So I think you know this is a real big crisis. I think I do not think that we have actually faced this kind of a problem ever in the post-war period when we had a multilateral framework of trade rules which was intended to prevent the kind of a situation that we faced in the 30s. The 30s did not have a multilateral organization, GATT was formed it after the war. So we are virtually in a situation we are back to the 1930s where in the absence of trade rules countries could actually go and do whatever they felt like. And today although we have the trade rules the largest economy you know in a sort of a unipolar world the largest or strongest you know sort of country is actually disregarding all the multilateral rules and wants to tell the world that we do not accept anything which is multilaterally decided and we will go our own way. Now I think this is an exceptional situation we cannot actually live with this situation. So the only response that we can have is that we need to sort of coordinate our efforts and we really need to isolate the United States.