Today we find ourselves watching and wondering, after eight years of what I consider failed leadership, will we get an improvement?  There are so many huge issues our country faces, and they have been exacerbated by our current Divider-In-Chief.  Pitting one group of Americans against others, while lamenting partisanship, has been a hallmark of Mr. Obama.  Yet now the pendulum has swung back, with many of those Americans that feel left out of Mr. Obama’s vision of America flocking to Mr. Trump’s view–one that is strangely similar.  Both men think America can be great, both men think that they have superior wisdom and leadership that can take us where we need to be (if only we’ll listen), and both speak to baser fears within us to encourage support.  Further, and important for this economist, both refuse to exercise leadership in many of the troubling issues of our economy.  Mr. Obama’s failure to address our fiscal future is epic; but fortunately scheduled to end soon.  But Mr. Trump wants to take his place, and the current hallmark issue he argues for going into today’s Ohio primary is how free trade is a disaster for Ohio.  This populist message against free trade is clearly helping him, and explains a lot of why many democrats are leaving their party this election cycle and voting for Mr. Trump.  The exit polling from Michigan shows that this resonates well with an American public seeing stagnate economic growth.

But leadership is about taking us where we need to go, even if we don’t want to go there.  But do we need to go there?  The undeniable economic answer is YES YES!  While our economy is not doing nearly as well as is should, the spectacular growth of the last few centuries is primarily due to Adam Smith’s call for extended markets and the division of labor–yes, free trade is what has led to literally billions being lifted from extreme poverty.  And periods of retrenchment from this ideal have led to economic slowdown and disaster, from the Great Depression (and the collapse of global free trade) to today’s slow growth due in part to begger-thy-neighbor competitive currency devaluations (which yes, includes what our own Fed tried to do initially with its Quantitative Easing program).

But Free Trade is always a hard political sell; there are entrenched interests that will lose in the short run as each country adapts production according to their comparative advantage.  Somehow getting cheaper Chinese toys at Walmart doesn’t seem to make up for losing the entire factory in the home town of your rust belt state.  Because the benefits of free trade are so powerful, and because the losses are so painful, it takes both leadership to promote it, and good policies to adjust to it.  Free trade has been part of presidential leadership for decades, precisely because only a national leader can overcome the local special interest politics from those harmed in the short run.  Mr. Obama came on board frustratingly late, which is one reason why the TPP deal is in such trouble (albeit it would have more Republican support if they thought they could trust him).  But it also needs to pushed from a position of strength, in a growing economy, and Mr. Obama has fought many attempts at private sector growth that disagreed with his base’s vision of a greener and fairer American future.  So does Mr. Trump address the root of our economic problems?  Not really–he blames foreigners and free trade:

“You know, Michigan’s been stripped,” Trump told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Wednesday. “You look at those empty factories all over the place. And nobody hits that message better than me.”

When news broke three weeks ago that the air-conditioner maker Carrier was moving 1,400 jobs from a plant in Indianapolis to Monterrey, Mexico, Trump wrote on Facebook: “We cannot allow this to keep happening. It will NOT happen under my watch.”

I don’t disagree with his latter comment, if he instead said something to the effect of “When I’m president, I’ll make sure America is such a great place to run a business that no one will want to leave.  I’ll get rid of the unnecessary regulations, I’ll reform the tax code, I’ll end the government policies that limit worker participation, I’ll stop the Democrat’s “War on Work”; America will be great again!”  But instead he panders to fears and seems to threaten trade wars with any country that doesn’t do what he wants.  That’s not leadership; that’s populism.  And that’s not what Republican’s promote, its what Democrats do.  Its time for Republican primary voters to look in the mirror.  Do you see Donald Trump?  If not, you know what to do today!

EDIT Update:  For you Econ/Free Trade geeks, this issue is splitting even the economists in blogosphere today.  Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, who was recognized by the Nobel committee primarily for his work in international trade, has come out against his former position in favor of free trade, causing even some of his noted Keynesian supporters to abandon him, in addition to the usual free-marketeers.  This link will take you to that debate if you are interested.