Commentary
Evaluating President Trump’s tariff policy involves examining it from two different perspectives: completing the shift from post-Cold War containment of the Soviet Union to addressing the next challenge, from China, and the assurance that Trump is sincere in his desire to negotiate new fair-trading arrangements to effectively eliminate America’s anachronistic trade deficit.
Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill all promised that they would swiftly evacuate the liberated countries of Western Europe, except for Germany, and hold in all of them completely democratic all-party elections. The Western allies scrupulously observed this commitment, including in Italy and France, even though the communist parties in those countries gained over 20 percent of the vote. The Soviet Union violated its promises, however, and no such elections were held until the communist bloc and international communism itself disintegrated 45 years after the end of World War II….