[ExI] Fwd: No, Ronald Reagan Didn’t Love Tariffs

Mon Oct 27 13:30:37 UTC 2025

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Paul Krugman from Paul Krugman <paulkrugman at substack.com>
Date: Mon, Oct 27, 2025 at 6:34 AM
Subject: No, Ronald Reagan Didn’t Love Tariffs
To: <johnkclark at gmail.com>

He wasn’t a free-trade purist, but he was nothing like Trump.
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No, Ronald Reagan Didn’t Love Tariffs
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wasn’t a free-trade purist, but he was nothing like Trump.

Paul Krugman <https://substack.com/@paulkrugman>
Oct 27
<https://substack.com/@paulkrugman>

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Source: Meidas Touch

Too much personal stuff going on for a full post today, and also suffering
from absurdity overload. Hard to top this:
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But I thought I’d take a few minutes to weigh in on one piece of the
absurdity: Donald Trump’s hysterical reaction to an ad run by the Canadian
province of Ontario that featured audio of Ronald Reagan denouncing tariffs
and extolling free trade.

I suspect that the ad especially enraged Trump because it featured Reagan,
still the Republican lodestar, making a serious, reasoned case for why
tariffs are generally bad for the country. In the ad, Reagan sounded
presidential and trustworthy, a sure reminder of how far the Republican
party has sunk while in the grip of a grandiose, snarling, whining toddler.

So Trump claimed that the ad was “FAKE” and that Reagan “LOVED tariffs.”
Actually, the ad accurately conveyed the sense of Reagan’s remarks — and
no, Reagan didn’t love tariffs.

It’s straightforward to go through the historical record to discover
Reagan’s actual position on trade. As the Financial Times
<https://substack.com/redirect/bda9b6d9-b3bf-4674-abb2-c6a323133113?j=eyJ1IjoiNngzbm4ifQ.I1PMvYo4mI3PquTDRhL5Dev-9_ouIq3kw6ZhrVNsy8o>
puts it, Reagan “was a devout champion of open trade who used tariffs
sparingly and reluctantly.”

I can also attest personally to the reality of Reagan’s tariff policies
because I served a year in the Reagan administration, as a sub-political,
technocratic staffer working on international policy at the Council of
Economic Advisers:
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Reagan did, in fact, repeatedly emphasize the virtues of free trade. Like
all modern presidents, he nonetheless imposed some tariffs for political
reasons. But Reagan always stayed within the boundaries of the law, using
his right to impose discretionary tariffs as pressure release valves rather
than abusing his authority to make tariff policy an instrument of his
personal whims.

Now, Reagan did many things that, I believe, harmed America. Indeed, I
would argue that his tax cuts, deregulation and anti-union policies, as
well as his exploitation of racial tensions, were critical in laying the
foundation for the plutocracy that is now destroying our democracy. But one
thing that was clear to me while working within the Reagan administration
was that Reagan and his people — totally unlike Trump — took their promises
to other countries seriously. If a proposed policy was in clear violation
of our international agreements, it was simply out of bounds.

By contrast, as far as I can tell *everything* that Trump has done on
tariffs involves breaking solemn, supposedly binding past pledges to other
nations and expecting those countries to meekly go along.

I never met Reagan. But I was close enough to witness how the tariff policy
sausage was made during his administration, and it was nothing like the
lawless chaos that rules under Trump.

MUSICAL CODA
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