Historical Inequality This week President Trump resurrected his contention that a “reciprocal tax” should be imposed that equalizes the tariffs applied by the U.S. on imports with those applied by trading partners on equivalent goods from the United States. Such a move would likely violate U.S. WTO commitments, but it does highlight the inequity of the current global trading rules. President Trump argues that the situation exists because his predecessors were too “lazy” to rebalance the situation. More accurate is that imbalanced tariff rates were acceptable as a post-WWII global economic stimulus policy when the American economy was dominant, but the world has now reached a tipping point that requires a recalibrati...