We wouldn’t say that we’re greatly enamoured with Donald Trump’s trade policies but there is a silver lining all the same:

Examining his tariff-hiking, trade-war-inducing approach to international relations, their research shows the claim that it protects manufacturing jobs is… fake news. Far from creating jobs, it has reduced them. Yes, domestic manufacturers get some protection within the US market, but that is more than offset by the fact that they face higher costs for components they import and lose export markets when others (such as China and the EU) retaliate. The lesson? Trade wars bad, independent central banks good.

Not just that trying out protectionist policies and thereby proving they don’t work is educational. But the antipathy to Trump is such - all that “Orange Man Bad” stuff all over the place - that anything he proposes is opposed just because of the source of the proposal.

Meaning that the right on left is now near entirely converted to the cause of free trade. Which is indeed a silver lining of great value.

Of course, as soon as the political wheel of fortune turns we’ll find that somehow restrictions upon trade proposed by progressives are different in some manner, miraculously beneficial. But for the moment Trump has managed that impossibility, encouraged the left to embrace a useful economic policy. For which, given the rarity of the event, we should be grateful.