The Wall Street Journal editorial board, a long-standing traditional economic conservative group that has sounded the alarm on President Donald Trump's trade isolationism for months, breathed a sigh of relief at the trade deal the president is on the verge of brokering with the United Kingdom.
The deal is fairly modest in scope, the board acknowledged, and it doesn't change the fact that Trump has been setting world trade on fire and endangering the U.S. economy for no reason — but, they wrote, if staging a win like this is what it takes to let Trump walk away and unwind the rest of the trade war, so be it.
"It appears the deal won’t reduce Britain’s health-and-safety standards for American beef, which has long been U.S. ranchers’ main sticking point. Also left out is Britain’s ban on imports of American chicken that’s been disinfected in a chlorine wash, despite the lack of any health risks," the board wrote. However, "the details here matter less at the current moment than the direction of U.S. trade policy, as the buoyant market response recognizes. A month ago the world looked to be on the edge of a potential 1930s-style trade meltdown."
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What matters, the board continued, is that Trump "is promising many more trade deals to come, as he tries to execute a retreat from his tariff morass." A significant development given that Trump seems sincerely to believe tariffs are necessary, even as his own supporters beg him for relief.
"Mr. Trump and his protectionist chorus will say this was the plan all along, as if a flight from the dollar and U.S. equities and a surge in bond yields were anticipated," said the report. "The President likes tariffs for their own sake, which is why he made his April 2 announcement. But the looming economic damage has proven to be too risky to be politically sustainable. If Republicans want to pretend this retreat is genius at work, fine with us as long as the damage is reduced."
The U.S. economy is still being severely damaged by Trump's trade restrictions, the board wrote, and there's a lot of work to do to get things back on track.
However, they concluded, "the British deal offers a template for a partial face-saving exit, if Mr. Trump will take it."