## Inside a Trade War

## Source details

**Canonical URL:** [Inside a Trade War](https://www.imf.org/en/publications/fandd/issues/2026/06/book-review-inside-a-trade-war-elizabeth-van-heuvelen)

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## Bibliographic details
- Authors: ELIZABETH VAN HEUVELEN
- Published: May 19, 2026

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### Overview
- 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.

### Diagnosis: causes and changing context
- 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.

### Defensive toolkit: supply-chain resilience, stockpiling, and subsidies
- 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.

### Offensive toolkit: tariffs and export controls
- 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.

### Multilateral rules and prospects for cooperation
- 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."

### Assessment and audience
- 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.*

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_Source: https://www.imf.org/en/publications/fandd/issues/2026/06/book-review-inside-a-trade-war-elizabeth-van-heuvelen_