Democratic protectionism

President Trump has abandoned current Republican orthodoxy in favor of GOP traditionalism in his protectionist trade policy. He does so with the support of a fair number of Democrats, in a deviation from their own ancient tradition.  For most of U.S. history the Democracy was a free-trade party on the zero-sum assumption that tariffs burdened all Americans for the benefit of only a few. Their position reflected the interests of their early constituents: southern planters who imported finished goods and feared that tariffs would harm their personal balance of trade, and coastal workers who handled imported goods and feared that tariffs would reduce their workloads and finally put them out of work. The party's position didn't really change until the 1960s, when its Rust Belt base began to feel threatened by imports from  Europe and Japan. The change was never complete, however, and was vigorously resisted by neoliberals who saw trade agreements rather than tariffs as the key to full employment. Despite the neoliberals' dominance since the 1990s, a populist streak -- in this context a belief that American consumers, or at least the U.S. government, owe solidarity to American workers -- has persisted with a vehemence that resists even a Democrat's instinctive antipathy toward Donald Trump.  If this doesn't seem as drastic a reversal as the Republican shift from protectionism to free trade, that's probably because the Democrats' old free-trade position never was as ideological as the Republicans' current position. In the old days, Democrats didn't oppose protectionism because they thought the Market knew best, but because they thought tariffs unfair to most Americans. Protectionist Democrats today believe that globalization is unfair to most Americans, and they assume that Republican free traders care more for the sacred Market than they do for their fellow citizens. Democrats still have a profoundly different notion of the national interest from Donald Trump's, but just as they can concede that a broken clock is right twice a day, some of them see that on trade their notions and his intersect. Whether that will inspire any further search for common ground remains to be seen.