Taking liberties
GEORGE MAGNUS
O ften accused of being rambling or incoherent, in his inaugural address President Donald Trump did—for better or worse—have something substantial to say. He summed it up in the two-word slogan, “America First.” To the uninitiated, this might have sounded like typical new-president waffle that might be forgotten as quickly as the “thousand points of light” of George HW Bush’s 1989 inaugural. Those who know their American history, however, were not so easily soothed. For “America First” was also the slogan of the isolationists during the 1930s, the last time the world descended into a serious trade war. The question that can no longer be ducked is whether it could happen again.