Is there a cycle to it?

For those following the trade war and its aftermaths at the WTO, Arvind Panagariya's piece on WTO being on the brink is a concise summation.

A Panglossian may still argue that the vast damage that a wider trade war would inflict would at last convince political leaderships that trade openness is not the enemy, protectionism is. If so, this would be a replay of history that saw the highly prosperous First Globalisation from 1870 to 1914 descend into escalating protection during inter-war years. Lessons learned from that phase of protectionism brought the global leadership together to build what came to be known as the GATT-WTO system.

Times are cyclical. So is trade and responses to the globalization debate, perhaps?