America is in a funk. With their country slipping into an economic and cultural morass and at risk of losing its footing on the global chessboard, Americans find themselves working harder than ever and still falling further and further behind. How can this be?

Flailing for an answer, they find it in the mouth of a politician who tells them he can make America great again! The problem, he tells them, is a trade imbalance. Americans are getting hammered by their foreign competition, the politician says, and they need strong tariffs to save the economy and restore the might of the USA. But these tariffs, it turns out, outrage even friendly nations and provoke retaliatory measures that spiral into an all-out trade war.

2018? Donald Trump?

No. 1930. Senator Reed Smoot.

What? Did they glaze over this one in history class? Gee, I wonder why.

Discover the eerie parallels between the trade war that deepened the Great Depression and set the world on the path to WWII and our current situation in this week’s edition of The Corbett Report Subscriber.

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