I am very much an anti Trumper and went into the article with some trepidation but I thought it even-handed, if shallow, overview until the very end.
The article correctly points out the disaster of Smoot Hawley and the effectiveness of GATT. It attributes much of the world-wide reduction of poverty on free trade.
I think it's written from the view of traditional free-market conservatives unwilling to criticize trump directly.
They equate VAT with import tax. That is straight up lie. So, I would triple check any other claim they have. Someone lying that blatantly about something so easy to verify is going to lie a lot about stuff that is less known, potentially nuanced and harder to verify - like history.
The first 42 paragraphs read like something that could have been written by any libertarian free-market thinker at any point during the last 80 years. The final 3 paragraphs read like something written in the last few months to appease the current administration.
The article correctly points out the disaster of Smoot Hawley and the effectiveness of GATT. It attributes much of the world-wide reduction of poverty on free trade.
I think it's written from the view of traditional free-market conservatives unwilling to criticize trump directly.