How tariffs destroy what makes America great

"I'll let others describe the economic carnage President Donald Trump's tariffs have already begun to wreak. I want to describe the damage they will do to the American psyche and the American soul."

- David Brooks

Mr. Trump is building walls. His trade policies ostracise, cut off the flow of goods but also the flow of ideas, human, technology and friendships as well. His immigration policies do the same. He assaults the institutions and communities most involved in international exchange: scientists, researchers, universities, the diplomatic corps, foreign aid agencies and international alliances like Nato. The essence of the Trump agenda might be: We don't like those damn foreigners.

The problem is that great nations throughout the history of Western civilisation have been crossroads nations. They have been places where people from all over met, exchanged ideas and came up with new ones together.

In Rock Cities: Civilisation, Peter Hall looked at the most innovative places down through the centuries: Athens in the fifth century BC, Florence in the 15th century, Vienna from the late 18th century to the eve of World War I, New York from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century, the Bay Area later on. They were all meeting points for people from different nations. Hall writes, "People meet, people talk, people listen to each other's music and each other's words, dance each other's dances, take in each other's thoughts, and so, by accident of geography, sparks may be struck and something new come out of the encounter." This, he continues, happens in junction points, places that have common civic architecture. They are usually un-classbound, nonhierarchical, informal.

Economic innovation explodes, he writes, "in places with a rich network of import channels, which in turn provide channels for new ideas".