Daniel McCarthy

Has Donald Trump sparked off a trade war? His plans for a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and 10 percent tariff on aluminum have shocked friend and foe alike. China is outraged; so are Canada, Japan, and South Korea—allies that in fact export more steel to the U.S. than China does. They stand to be hurt worst if they aren’t granted exemptions or cut special deals by the president. Trump accuses the Chinese of 'dumping' steel into the American market, while the legal grounds for his new tariffs rest in the idea that strategically critical manufacturing is endangered by a diminished U.S. metals industry.

Something has gone horribly wrong in America, but it isn’t Donald Trump. The 45th president’s first year has in fact been a very good year for the country. By the time those 12 months were up, the unemployment rate was the lowest the country had seen in 18 years, and the number of new filings for unemployment benefits was at a 45-year record low. Even black Americans were doing better under Trump than they did under the first black president: by the start of 2018 the black unemployment rate was the lowest it had been since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started keeping count. For all that his enemies insist that Trump’s electoral appeal was really about race, in 2016 Trump made jobs the centrepiece of campaign.

 Washington D.C. Even a reality show needs good plot twists, and Donald Trump has delivered them like the master he is. First the misdirection: a week of publicly humiliating his attorney-general, Jeff Sessions, to the point where Sessions would surely quit or be fired. Then the sudden swerve — it was the press shop, not the justice department, that was decapitated. Sean Spicer was out as press secretary. Anthony Scaramucci, a mini Trump whose language was as blue as the lenses of his fancy sunglasses, was in as White House communications director. Reince Priebus, chief of staff, was next to go, sacked after clashing with ‘the Mooch’. And then the climactic twist: in virtually his first act in office, Priebus’s replacement, Marine Gen.

Last week more than 130 right-wing thinkers put their names to a defiant document — a list of ‘Scholars and Writers for America’ in support of Donald Trump. It includes the editors of five of the country’s leading conservative journals of ideas: R.R. Reno of the Christian conservative First Things; Roger Kimball of the New Criterion, the right’s leading journal of the arts; Charles Kesler of the Claremont Review of Books; the American Spectator’s R. Emmett Tyrrell; and me, the editor of the American Conservative. (Notably lacking are names from America’s oldest conservative magazine, National Review, which has been as hostile to Trump as the columnists of the New York Times and Washington Post.

Last week more than 130 right-wing thinkers put their names to a defiant document — a list of ‘Scholars and Writers for America’ in support of Donald Trump. It includes the editors of five of the country’s leading conservative journals of ideas: R.R. Reno of the Christian conservative First Things; Roger Kimball of the New Criterion, the right’s leading journal of the arts; Charles Kesler of the Claremont Review of Books; the American Spectator’s R. Emmett Tyrrell; and me, the editor of the American Conservative. (Notably lacking are names from America’s oldest conservative magazine, National Review, which has been as hostile to Trump as the columnists of the New York Times and Washington Post.