Many countries find distasteful the unilateral transactional approach that the U.S. is now willing to adopt on important cross-border interactions. Yet, as long as America is dominant in certain areas and pursues tactical gains at the risk of longer-term strategic harm, they have few choices but to realign themselves for now to this new reality.
Mohamed A. El-Erian is a Bloomberg View columnist. He is the chief economic adviser at Allianz SE and chairman of the President’s Global Development Council, and he was chief executive and co-chief investment officer of Pimco.
This column was provided by Bloomberg News.