No, Ronald Reagan Didn’t Love Tariffs

He wasn’t a free-trade purist, but he was nothing like Trump.

Source: Meidas Touch

Too much personal stuff going on for a full post today, and also suffering from absurdity overload. Hard to top this:

But I thought I’d take a few minutes to weigh in on one piece of the absurdity: Donald Trump’s hysterical reaction to an ad run by the Canadian province of Ontario that featured audio of Ronald Reagan denouncing tariffs and extolling free trade.

I suspect that the ad especially enraged Trump because it featured Reagan, still the Republican lodestar, making a serious, reasoned case for why tariffs are generally bad for the country. In the ad, Reagan sounded presidential and trustworthy, a sure reminder of how far the Republican party has sunk while in the grip of a grandiose, snarling, whining toddler.

So Trump claimed that the ad was “FAKE” and that Reagan “LOVED tariffs.” Actually, the ad accurately conveyed the sense of Reagan’s remarks — and no, Reagan didn’t love tariffs.

It’s straightforward to go through the historical record to discover Reagan’s actual position on trade. As the Financial Times puts it, Reagan “was a devout champion of open trade who used tariffs sparingly and reluctantly.”

I can also attest personally to the reality of Reagan’s tariff policies because I served a year in the Reagan administration, as a sub-political, technocratic staffer working on international policy at the Council of Economic Advisers:

Reagan did, in fact, repeatedly emphasize the virtues of free trade. Like all modern presidents, he nonetheless imposed some tariffs for political reasons. But Reagan always stayed within the boundaries of the law, using his right to impose discretionary tariffs as pressure release valves rather than abusing his authority to make tariff policy an instrument of his personal whims.

Now, Reagan did many things that, I believe, harmed America. Indeed, I would argue that his tax cuts, deregulation and anti-union policies, as well as his exploitation of racial tensions, were critical in laying the foundation for the plutocracy that is now destroying our democracy. But one thing that was clear to me while working within the Reagan administration was that Reagan and his people — totally unlike Trump — took their promises to other countries seriously. If a proposed policy was in clear violation of our international agreements, it was simply out of bounds.

By contrast, as far as I can tell everything that Trump has done on tariffs involves breaking solemn, supposedly binding past pledges to other nations and expecting those countries to meekly go along.

I never met Reagan. But I was close enough to witness how the tariff policy sausage was made during his administration, and it was nothing like the lawless chaos that rules under Trump.

MUSICAL CODA