We have guests for the next couple of days, and it would be rude to spend the whole time chained to the computer. So this post and maybe the next will be short and somewhat meta.On Tuesday I talked to Greg Sargent of the New Republic; transcript here. I highly recommend subscribing to Greg’s podcast!It was a good if depressing discussion, in part about Trump’s trade “deals” but also about how they are being (mis)reported. The question is how something like the agreement with the European Union, in which the U.S. imposed taxes on its own population while Europe made meaningless promises on investment and energy purchases, leads to headlines like this:Long ago the economist Joan Robinson arguably pre-butted Trump’s argument for protectionism because, he claims, other nations are treating us unfairly:The popular view that free trade is all very well so long as all nations are free-traders, but that
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