[August]

I think the author makes some very interesting points.

There he goes again. President Trump just won’t listen to those who know better.

And there they go again. The smart money set is certain that this time, the sky really is falling.


Perhaps those lecturing the president over his tariff plans are right that he is making a colossal mistake and will regret losing his top economic advisor, Gary Cohn, over the decision. If nothing else, their learned references to the awful consequences of actual trade wars and to the disaster of the Smoot-Hawley broadside in 1930 make for a coherent argument against protectionism.


Except for one thing: the critics offer no solutions for the working class Americans left behind by the bipartisan push for globalization. Their silence on the destructive impacts of the deindustrialization of America suggest they have no answers — and not much compassion for the families who pay the price of trade policies through lost jobs and hollowed-out towns.
Moreover, their failure to focus on the plight of those families and how they factor into the president’s view of the nation shows they still don’t fully appreciate why Trump was elected. It was legions of frustrated working and middle-class voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin that helped him barrel through the supposedly solid blue wall of Democratic states.

In many ways, the tariff tiff is playing out in similar fashion to Trump’s other big announcement of last week — his agreement to meet with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. Once again, the president is accused of naivete, this time for giving away the favor of a presidential meeting without guarantees of concessions.
He is also being called arrogant for thinking he can work magic on a problem that defied the three previous presidents.
The detractors may be right that Trump is walking into a trap. If the talks fail, he’ll be embarrassed and left in a weaker position than now. That, in turn, might leave no option except a military strike, which could be a catastrophe.
Yet, as with tariffs, the naysayers have no answer for a problem Trump inherited from presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. So why should Trump follow the paths most taken when they yielded only a more dangerous situation, now that North Korea has nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles?

https://nypost.com/2018/03/11/critic...-no-solutions/