The free market of Goldman Sachs is not the free market of the lemonade stand.
From the immediate abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), to the recent “hire American buy American” executive order, to the strong likelihood of serious and important steps to renegotiate NAFTA, there is much in President Trump’s actions thus far in his term to encourage his economic-nationalist base.
Far less encouraging, however, is the sorry state of public discourse about the president’s economic-nationalist policies, particularly on trade. Ideological opponents of the president’s economic-nationalist agenda have barely graduated from superficial charges of “protectionism.” And those who are formerly opposed, such as Speaker Paul Ryan, have fallen conveniently silent on the trade issue, offering no public acknowledgment or principled justification for the apparent (and likely temporary) departure from GOP orthodoxy.
