Trump’s Pro-Growth Path to Victory After 16 years of malaise, voters are responding to his call to make America competitive again. By Donald L. Luskin
http://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-pro-growth-path-to-victory-1466465044
“Call Mr. Trump a know-nothing if you must. But after 16 years in the new U.S. millennium of malaise, voters are responding to his diagnosis that something has gone unexpectedly wrong with trade, and his proposals to make America more dynamic in order to adapt. Don’t forget the last know-nothing who came along and showed America how to pull out of a malaise, with an agenda quite similar to Mr. Trump’s, to cut taxes and slash regulations on businesses and energy. His name was Ronald Reagan.”
Can Donald Trump make America grow again? His record-breaking number of GOP primary voters—more than 13 million—seem to think so. And Americans overall strongly prefer Mr. Trump over Hillary Clinton on the economy, and on employment and jobs, according to Gallup’s latest polling.
But according to the orthodoxy of the economically sophisticated on both the left and the right, Mr. Trump’s signature agenda—his hostility to global trade, especially with China and Mexico—is antigrowth know-nothing protectionism. More trade is axiomatically better than less, say the sophisticates, and Mr. Trump is tempting the angry masses into a suicidal trade war.
Yet consider the potentially axiom-breaking speed and magnitude of the rise of U.S. trade with China after China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001. By 2015, compared with 2000, American trade with China (adjusted for inflation) almost tripled to a $577 billion annual rate, and now represents 3.2% of U.S. gross domestic product. CONTINUE AT SITE
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