Inside a Trade War

Source details

Publication: F&D Magazine.
Author of review: ELIZABETH VAN HEUVELEN, senior economist in the IMF’s Strategy, Policy, and Review Department.
Reviewed book: How to Win a Trade War — An Optimistic Guide to an Anxious Global Economy by Soumaya Keynes and Chad P. Bown; Simon & Schuster; New York, NY, 2026; 288 pp.; $30.
Review date: June 2026.
Reading time note on page: Less than a minute(0 words) Read.

Long-running frictions stem from subsidies and structural imbalances between surplus and deficit economies that multilateral rules were never designed to fully address.
The pandemic exposed fragility in global supply chains, prompting governments to rethink the trade-off between efficiency and resilience.
The rise of industrial policy and trade intervention in the name of national security has shifted debate away from market access toward strategic competition.
The authors present a thoughtful reflection on how these dynamics produced the current trade-war environment.

Primary defensive recommendations hinge on:
- Managing supply-chain resilience while acknowledging the difficulty of balancing resilience and efficiency.
- Tweaking subsidies cautiously to mitigate spillovers.
Key observations and analogies used by the authors:
- Calibrating supply chains is compared to "deciphering a teenager’s mood: intuitive in theory, but maddeningly inadequate in practice."
- Stockpiling is cautioned against as revealing difficulties in identifying a true crisis and knowing when to draw down reserves; illustrated by a detour into the world of “preppers.”
- Subsidy management described: “Mastering subsidies is like baking a cake,” with a warning not to “over-cater” and that spillovers—like a food fight at a chaotic dinner—can leave bystanders worse off.

The book examines tariffs and export controls with nuance:
- Import restrictions are likened to pharmaceuticals: policymakers may have a “drug of choice” but are urged to “use responsibly.”
- The book "explains both the logic and the limits of tariffs, including why retaliation does not always follow expected patterns."
- The authors concede that “being mean can pay off,” acknowledging that tariffs can be an effective, if blunt, negotiating tool.

Authors were once optimistic about multilateral rules and international cooperation but are now less confident.
The multilateral rules previously advocated "no longer enjoy the necessary backing and rigor to prevent conflict and are helpless in the face of current tensions."

Tone: entertaining, with humorous analogies that bring abstruse economic concepts to life, yet thoughtful and candid.
Final evaluation: The book does not promise easy answers but offers "an honest reckoning of policy trade-offs and a rigorous, accessible map of the terrain."
Recommended audience: "For anyone trying to make sense of the conflicts reshaping the global trading system, this is an essential guide."

F&D Magazine — Inside a Trade War; ELIZABETH VAN HEUVELEN; June 2026.

Inside a Trade War
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