In a speech in Brussels, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Christine Lagarde said last week that the global growth is gaining momentum in both advanced and emerging economies and growth prospects are improving, however, she warned that the ‘sword of protectionism’ hangs over it. While Ms. Lagarde didn’t name the Trump administration but it was quite clear who she was referring to with her sword comments. It looks like that someone heard those allegations in the Trump administration.

President trump’s commerce secretary, billionaire Wilbur Ross called the acquisitions as rubbish. He said that these veiled attacks are targeted at the Trump administration and added that those acquisitions are being fired in the wrong direction. Mr. Ross has been put in charge by President Trump with the aim to find ways to reduce the enormous trade deficits of the United States.

In an interview with the Financial Times, he said that the response to those criticisms is simple. The United States is the least protectionist of the major areas. The US is far less protectionist that Europe, Japan, and China. “We also have trade deficits with all three of those places. So they talk free trade. But in fact what they practice is protectionism. And every time we do anything to defend ourselves, even against the puny obligations that they have, they call that protectionism. It’s rubbish.”

He accused Ms. Lagarde and other defenders of the current multilateral system of “sloganeering” of trying to preserve a system that had contributed to the ballooning of the US trade deficit since the 1970s. ​“’We like it that way. So we don’t want you to disrupt it.’ That’s what they are really saying when you strip it away……That’s the bottom line. But that’s not going to happen. Our tolerance for continuing to be the deficit that eats the surpluses of the whole rest of the world….the president is not tolerant of that anymore.”

The remarks come before the IMF and World Bank’s spring meeting in Washington and it clears the air once again that the United States is very serious about reducing trade deficits.