Chinese History Shows What a Closed Economy May Result In

The Middle Kingdom erred greatly by giving up on foreign trade

- DAVID FICKLING

From a certain angle, US President Donald Trump's tariff blitz looks like nothing so much as a chronic case of China envy. Look at the losers' list announced last week in the season finale of this all-too-real reality show: Every sign points towards a desire to Make America China Again, from the obsession with trade deficits to the promise to bring back manufacturing jobs from abroad. Think of a continent-sized economy with a persistent trade surplus and a booming factory sector, and the most obvious candidate is China.

If Trump is borrowing an economic lesson from China, though, it's not the one that drove its economic rise over the past two-and-a-half decades. That episode followed a sharp reduction in trade barriers and decades of reforms to reduce the role of the state and provide a stable investment environment, pretty much the opposite of what the US is doing right now.