Bouvard on Bilateral Trade Agreements and Market Creation

One simple way of looking at the question of tariffs is to remember that the US entered many multilateral trade agreements including many countries, presumably in the name of free trade. But why would free trade, if all wanted it, require such agreements? Why not just let

everyone in your country trade with anyone in any other country they wanted? The deals must be about managing trade, including negotiating tariffs, working conditions, environmental conditions, etc. If free trade in fact involves a market in creating markets between countries

we can then focus on a simple Trump innovation: bilateral as opposed to multilateral agreements. Who benefits from the former and who from the latter? If global markets are always made, the question is how to use your leverage to make them, which may not place some approximation

to truly, genuinely free trade at the top of the list of priorities--in fact, that couldn't be the case if you're a political agent bearing a range of responsibilities and working within various constraints. So, bilateral vs multilateral sums things up better than "free trade."