Counterfactuals are impossible but nonetheless tempting. What if the Trump administration had not alienated virtually the whole of the business community with its attempt to reverse 70 years of progress in global trade? What if it had pursued the path of sincere diplomacy rather than coercive belligerence with China? What if it had pushed legal reforms in immigration rather than executive edicts? And what if in January the White House had consulted traditional public health experts rather than allowing career bureaucrats to talk the president into locking down?
We can never know the answers to these questions. But it is likely the case that the country and world would be a very different place than it is today, perhaps even a greater place. The economic policies of the Trump administration constitute one of the greatest lost opportunities of the postwar period. We’ll be paying the price for decades.
