Report: Trump Wants to Withdraw From the World Trade Organization, Too

President Trump has told White House officials that he wants to withdraw the United States from the World Trade Organization, according to a report on Axios, in a move that would throw global trade into chaos. “He’s [threatened to withdraw] 100 times. It would totally [screw] us as a country,” an unnamed source who’s discussed the subject with Trump told the news site. The same source said Trump has frequently told advisers: “We always get fucked by them [the WTO]. I don’t know why we’re in it. The WTO is designed by the rest of the world to screw the United States.” A U.S. withdrawal from the WTO would cast trillions of dollars of trade into doubt and throw a bomb under an institution that has been a pillar of global economic and political stability for over seven decades. Trump’s advisers and the trade community are not seriously entertaining the possibility that Trump would try to withdraw. A top trade lawyer in Washington told Axios: “We think he’s nuts, but not that nuts.”