RUTHFULLY YOURS

Reagan was no genius administrator ( Herbert Hoover was), so that’s not the difference. Though he promised Michigan auto workers help with Japanese imports and was grateful when they voted for him, he never kidded himself that America’s problems were somebody else’s fault rather than homegrown.

Trade was less important in those days, before China’s rise and the globalization of the world’s assembly line, but that wasn’t the reason either. The 1987 crash proved soon enough that investors were ready to panic if trade partners (Germany and the U.S.) got into a serious tiff.

The real difference is that Reagan’s protectionist devices were negotiated. They were acts of cartel creation, not unlike the cartels that have been known to spring up illegally when industries under strain seek to preserve capacity while avoiding price wars. Mr. Reagan used quotas, not tariffs. He kept the peace by inviting America’s trade partners to share in excess profits at the expense of American consumers. (Recall that one upshot was a nationwide bribery-and-kickback scandal when Honda Accords were in short supply.)

This was unattractive but it wasn’t a disaster, and Reagan’s protectionism quickly fell away when a global upswing began.

Mr. Trump, who had no experience in public office, seemed to strike a plausible bargain with his appointees. You advance a conventional pro-business agenda. Leave the show to me. That’s actually worked, sort of. Mr. Trump is the worst president ever, except by the results. The economy is strong. Wages are finally up. Business and consumer confidence is high. The stock market boomed for his first 12 months in office. The GOP tax law represented real progress on a self-defeating problem recognized by both parties, even by President Obama. CONTINUE AT SITE