America First Trade Policy

You can call it "MAGA" or you can call it "America First."  Either way, it's good to see common sense coming from Washington for a change.

 Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday delivered the Trump administration’s most sweeping statement yet of its economic-security doctrine, arguing that decades of bipartisan trade policy left the United States strategically dependent on foreign rivals and that the administration’s tariffs, industrial policies, and supply-chain measures are not a break with American tradition but an attempt to recover it....

Shades of Patrick J. Buchanan!!

 ...“A nation that cannot manufacture, mine, ship, or refine its needs gradually cedes its strength — and sovereignty — to others,” Bessent said. “That is a dangerous dependency for any country. It is an unacceptable one for the United States.”...

 ...“We measured abundance at the checkout counter rather than the factory gate,” he said. “We talked about GDP, but not enough about its composition.”...

That was the Libertarian line for decades:  "You may not have a job any more, but it's OK because you can buy cheap stuff at Wal-Mart, see??"

 ...Bessent traced what he described as a series of compounding errors: the decision to treat trade policy as separate from national strategy; the extension of strategic trust to China through WTO accession and permanent normal trade relations; and the embrace of just-in-time supply chains that the pandemic exposed as brittle. The failures, he argued, were not accidental but philosophical — the product of a political class that had “preferred the comfort of old formulas.”

“The warning lights were glaring all around us,” he said. “Cheaper was always better. Offshoring was inevitable. Industrial policy was unfashionable. And strategic dependence was acceptable so long as the cost remained invisible.”...

"Cheaper is always better."  Solid NOPE.  Those cheaper basement dehumidifiers, or--for that matter--household refrigerators, no longer work for decades.  They might not work for 5 years.  Is that an improvement, really?

We strongly disapprove of the War for Israel.  We think Trump's self-aggrandizement is tasteless at best, or obnoxious at worst.  But on election integrity, the removal of illegals, and economic/trade policy, he could not be better for the USA.

Should those reforms be totally implemented, it will be the shining monument he wants.