Trade, Donald Trump breaks with 200 years of economic orthodoxy

Foreigners are "killing us in the trade" because Americans spend much more on imports than in the rest of the world spends on Donald J. Trump blistering criticism of US trade policy 's to a simple equation reduces US exports. China trade imbalance with the United States, said Tuesday night, is "the biggest heist in world history."

Add a few "whereins" and "whences" and that the feeling would adapt very well to the worldview of the first Queen Elizabeth de-16th century England, to the court of Louis XIV-17th century, or the Iron Chancellor of Prussia, Otto von Bismarck in the 19th century the great powers of past centuries subscribed to the economic theory of mercantilism, "what we should always observe this rule: sell to strangers yearly than they consume more of their own in value "as his apostle, the director of the East India Company Thomas Mun, he wrote in the 1600s.

Now Mr. Trump is bringing back commercialism. New York billionaire is challenging the last 200 years of economic orthodoxy that trade among nations is good and more is better.

He is well on its way to becoming the first Republican candidate in nearly a century that has asked higher tariffs or import taxes, as a comprehensive defense against low-cost imports. And there is a good chance that a Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, who has expressed fewer reservations about trade, investment a long-standing political dynamics would face.

Among Republican standard-bearers, "No one who spoke Hoover and thus on trade," said IM Destler, professor of public policy at the University of Maryland and the author of "American Trade Politics," a story. For most of the last century, Mr. Destler said such skepticism about trade had been relegated to the periphery of the Republican Party.

mercantilism Mr. Trump is among its oldest and most stable public positions. At least since 1980, he described the trade as a zero-sum game in which countries lose by paying imports. The trade deficit with China, which reached $ 366 billion last year, makes America the biggest loser. "Our trade deficit with China is like having a business that is losing money every year," Mr. Trump told the New York Daily News in August. "Who would do business that way?"

During the current campaign he has regularly attorney tariffs as the best solution.

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