Herbert Hoover’s Ghost.

Herbert Hoover’s Ghost. By Bret Stephens

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/opinion/trump-tariffs-canada-mexico-europe.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&m

Excerpt: In 2014 I published a book called “America in Retreat,” with the subtitle, “The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder.” Though an entire chapter is devoted to a critique of Tea Party foreign policy, it was mainly a lament about what I saw as President Obama’s imprudent retreat from America’s global responsibilities and the risk of returning to the disastrous foreign policy mind-set of the 1930s. Silly me. I wrote the book one administration too soon. That’s the conclusion to draw from Donald Trump’s long-promised and now bluntly delivered imposition of steel and aluminum tariffs on Mexico, Canada and the European Union. And that was just after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin decided to put tariffs on China “on hold” to allow negotiations to continue. What was it that Sarah Palin once said about Obama’s foreign policy — that he was “coddling enemies and alienating allies”? Well, move over, Barack.