This paper argues that recent popular dissatisfaction with international trade and investment liberalisation stems largely from the form in which that liberalisation increasingly occurs—through bilateral, regional or plurilateral preferential trading agreements—and, as such, reflects concerns long held regarding such agreements. In this respect, it does not represent a particularly new form of concern and so is perhaps mischaracterised as a ‘backlash’. But a renewed willingness to exit from international agreements can have consequences for the nature of such agreements.