Trade is one of those subjects about which everyone has an opinion and almost nobody fully understands. Ask someone at a dinner party about tariffs, albeit potentially one full of economists or markets people who have little else to talk about, and you’ll get a confident answer. Ask them to explain the reactions of various governments to President Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs, and what was the quid pro quo, and you’re not likely to get as detailed an answer. How to Win a Trade War by Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown is written precisely for those who want a deeper dive into the nuances of trade without being lost in the field. I would even say there is no better duo than Keynes and Bown of Trade Talks fame to further educate us all on trade, trade policy, and what to do in this increasingly ‘deglobalising, slow globalising, fracturing’ world.

Despite the pedigrees of its two authors (Chad Bown was the Chief Economist at the US State Department during the Biden Administration and has been a fellow at the Peterson Institute since 2016, and Soumaya Keynes is the current Economics columnist for the FT after time spent as the Economics editor at The Economist) the authors and the book wear their education and teaching lightly. The writing mimics their Trade Talks style, being conversational without being overly simplistic. The authors take you into the minutiae of trade policy and issues without making you feel as if you’re presenting a legalistic argument at the World Trade Organisation. The authors do a good job of broadly summarising where the academic literature does and does not have clear answers and, also, of discussing where political, and in particular geopolitical, reality interferes with the utopia of free and fairly flowing trade.

This is where the book truly comes into its own and proves its value to economists and non economists alike. Trade books are often written by either the true believers who shudder at the mere thought of ‘national security’ interfering with Pareto-optimal trade flows and specialisation, or by those who think that autarky is the solution to all of society’s ills. The truth is messier, as is often the case. Of course, the benefits are real but diffuse, while the costs land heavily on specific industries, towns, or types of worker.This asymmetry is where trade issues become real for people and have had a hand in the great political shocks of the early 21st century (Trump’s elections, Brexit, and Liberation Day).

Keynes and Bown take us through that mess in a helpfully structured manner, showing us the considerations of governments, companies, and ultimately people, and surveying the tools of trade when a trade war is threatened or already upon us. They take us through the various incentives, use-cases, and drawbacks of various remedies and approaches (for instance, that stockpiling is hard and probably not practical in the long term, or as the authors put it, various trade remedies are like drugs, short-term highs for long-term damage). It does all of this in barely 220 pages, making it an undemanding read. Fundamentally, the authors treat trade and you seriously without forcing you to work through arcane models, make unfounded assumptions, or understand the legalese surrounding trade ad nauseam. They give you a solid, up-to-date picture of trade as it stands and trade wars or barriers as they are being launched by Washington, Brussels, Beijing, or London.

For anyone trying to make sense of a world where the global trade system is visibly creaking, Keynes and Bown are exactly the guides you want and this is exactly the book for this moment.