Past presidents were too afraid to withstand any pain from allowing markets to help adjust the economy.
President Trump’s tariffs—some of which he has now paused—were always a risky business. The president and his advisers should beware breaking the imperfect system of global trade; they won’t be able to build their preferred replacement quickly, if at all. They should also have been more wary of the surprises a multi-thousand-point drop in stock indices and attendant bond-market turmoil may reveal—including the major banks or financial firms that can’t withstand a crash of this magnitude.
