President Obama made the case for “open markets” in Greece on Wednesday, and warned that the resistance to globalization has deepened inequality around the world.
“The reaction can drag down a country’s growth,” Obama said of the pushback to globalization. “It can also lead to politics that create an unhealthy competition between countries.”
President-elect Trump ran on a promise to roll back multilateral trade deals and renegotiate them with America’s interests in mind. But Obama seemed to warn against those steps in his speech in Greece.
“We cannot sever the connections that have enabled so much progress and so much wealth,” Obama said at the Stavropol Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens.
The president acknowledged the limitations of globalization, given that it has allowed some wealthy people to exploit “loopholes” in the system for personal gain.
“The current path of globalization demands a course correction,” he said.
International trade deals and other elements of globalization must be reconfigured so their benefits are “more broadly shared by more people,” Obama said.
