World War One fundamentally transformed the constitutive elements of global order—states, markets, and civil society.1 The relationship of trade regimes to the political order in the aftermath of the war is one of the most understudied of these transformations. Before 1914, the world economy was underpinned by a network of bilateral trade treaties that provided reciprocal guarantees of non-discrimination through most-favored-nations (MFN) clauses. Such MFN clauses were intended to ensure that no single trade partner was ever treated as the “most favored nation,” privileged above others. During the war, the massive expansion in state economic authority and upsurge in protectionism...
