President Trump’s trade war is a stark departure from traditional U.S. trade policy. His journey off the beaten path has given rise to whispers of a new order of global finance and trade, what some are dubbing the “Mar-a-Lago accord.”
What do we know about that accord so far? For one thing, we know it is the brainchild of the president and two of his top economic advisers: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Stephen Miran, who chairs the Council of Economic Advisers. Indeed, last year Bessent said that he would “like to be part of…Bretton Woods realignments.” But the best snapshot of the Mar-a-Lago accord we have to date is a paper published by Miran last November titled “A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System.” In essence, the accord is a program whose intended purpose is to restore American production and employment by devaluing the dollar and imposing tariffs on foreign goods.
