Axios: Pro-globalist, free trade institutions have an awkward admission: President Trump is right.

Axios:

Leaders of major international organizations now warn the world has relied too much on the U.S. for economic growth, echoing White House calls for the rest of the globe to pick up the slack.

What they’re saying: “Countries should renew their focus on internal and external macroeconomic imbalances,” Kristalina Georgieva, the head of the International Monetary Fund, said yesterday.

“[E]xternal surpluses and deficits can create fertile ground for trade tensions,” Georgieva said in a speech titled “Toward a Better Balanced and More Resilient World Economy.”
The World Trade Organization had a similar message this week.

“Over-concentration — whether it’s where we buy from or where we sell to — leads to over-dependence, making economies more vulnerable to shocks and fostering a sense of unfair burden sharing,” Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the group’s director, told reporters.

“The U.S. has a point when it says too many countries are dependent on its market or the production of some critical inputs are too concentrated in certain sectors and geographies,” Okonjo-Iweala added.

The big picture: That is a nod to countries that sell far more goods and services abroad than they buy from others.

In the current protectionist era, that creates a huge new risk. Never before has the U.S. — the world’s biggest consumer — threatened a sudden withdrawal from the global stage.
Between the lines: Trump and some top economic advisors believe that America has footed the global bill for too long.