A strain of American politics has always longed for the government to be run like a business, and thus for a president to come from the private sector. Republicans chose corporate executive Wendell Willkie for their presidential nominee in 1940, and the populist entrepreneur H. Ross Perot attracted more than 18 percent of the vote for his independent bid in 1992. Carly Fiorina of Hewlett-Packard fame (or infamy) ran for the Senate and then president.
In 2016, we got our businessman. His trade war, which officially commenced July 5 with $34 billion in tariffs against China, suggests we got him from the wrong business — one based on wheeling and dealing rather than creation and commerce.
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