The Guardian fact checks Trump

Fact-check: Donald Trump on trade, globalization and the Clintons

The topic is Il Duce's comments in Monessen the other day.

They admit he was mostly right, in particular concerning the adverse effect freer trade has had on the American working class.

Democrats including Hillary really don't plan to do much about it.

And the fair trade rules Bernie calls for would protect foreign workers who make what we import, not the jobs of American workers.

They mean the foreigners who get jobs in the factories that replace American factories are protected against the worst forms of exploitation.

They do nothing to seriously slow the exportation of jobs free trade has entailed, let alone stop it, and the notion fair trade rules can reverse job exportation is an utter fantasy.

Nobody but Trump is proposing use of the only tools that could stop or reverse the flow of manufacturing jobs out of the US, tariffs and even selective import quotas and prohibitions.

Nobody.

This is one of those issues both major parties have simply refused to address for decades, watching with folded arms as the American working class got hammered.

And that is one of the reasons Trump has been able to so successfully challenge everyone else.

Just as the refusal of the European classe politique to give an inch on concerns about Islam and immigration has empowered the opposition to the very existence of the EU, so the refusal of the American classe politique to lift a finger to protect American labor from globalization has empowered Trump's rebellion.

And the irony is it is far from clear he would really even try to use such tools.

It is highly unlikely the congress would go along with him, anyway.

Opponents of his plan to raise tariffs point to the dangers of trade war and the harm done by raising tariffs in 1930.

Defenders point out we have for decades been running huge trade deficits anyway with the very countries from which our markets need protection, so our economy would suffer less harm from lost exports to them than it would gain by protection from imports from them.

Economists more and more seem to be admitting the protectionists have the better case.

So it seems, anyway.