Washington Post: OK fine, Trump's trade threats are working

Something surprising happened on the left's expected road to global ruin, courtesy of Donald Trump. We all know that Trump is not a big fan of many existing trade agreements, and that vowed throughout his campaign to rip up these agreements - followed either by renegotiation or, in some cases, imposition of tariffs against nations that would not deal in the manner Trump preferred. I'm as big a free-trader as anyone, and I am not eager to see protectionist policies imposed by the U.S. government because they usually end up costing U.S. consumers more than anyone else. But I also recognize what Trump has long understood about negotiations: In order to get the deal you want, you have to be willing to walk away with no deal at all. The left was sure that Trump's bluster would prompt other nations to impose new trade barriers against U.S. goods, triggering a global trade war that would jack up prices on just about everything and shut off our access to global markets. And if that had happened, it would have been an economic disaster. But now one of the biggest Trump-haters of all, the Washington Post, is forced to admit that, at least so far, Trump's trade rhetoric appears to be working exactly as he intended: