What Trump is doing is central economic planning

Trying to remake the American economy in his image, by raising taxes significantly on imports based on arbitrary calculations. Domestic companies will become accustomed to government protection and because they’ll be shut out from world markets, won’t face the competition required to make technological changes. The lack of competition will tend to higher prices, and when that bubble bursts, people will lose their jobs. I want so badly to be wrong, but the problem in this country is that we’re a debt and consumer driven society, instead of one driven by savings and investment. Until we fix monetary inflation, we are going to have distortions in trade balances.