Trade wars go nuclear
Raisner, 16—Founder of Proteus Capital Management (Remy, “In Favor of Free Trade,” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/remy-raisner/in-favor-of-free-trade_b_9748402.html, dml)
Furthermore, as world leaders, the U.S. and the European Union have a duty to support free trade and set the global tone. A retreat from trade would be a retreat from the responsibility and moral obligation of global leadership. It would be a loss of influence; other nations would jump at the opportunity to fill in the role. Globalization is not reversible: withdraw and you lose out. And perhaps most importantly, cross-border trade fosters world peace: when nations trade with each other, conflicts, military or others, are less likely to occur. In the 1930s, Nazi Germany opted for autarky -we all know what followed. In a world with as many conflicts as today, in the nuclear age, we should think about this twice.