Trump meeting with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr at the White House on July 22 for trade tariff negotiations. — TNS
ON hearing of the Continental Army’s pivotal victory at the Battle of Saratoga in 1777, John Sinclair told Adam Smith, “The British nation must be ruined”. As Sinclair recalled, the author of The Wealth of Nations (published the year before) urged him to calm down. “Be assured, my young friend, there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.”
Dedicated though he was to the benefits of free trade, Smith would doubtless say the same about today’s turn toward mercantilism in the United States. It’s a blow, but not the end of the world.
