How Donald Trump became Adam Smith’s street-fighting man

Despite being an icon of economic liberty, Smith did not think that government intervention was always bad: it depended on the circumstances

Furious attacks on Donald Trump’s economic policies from self-declared conservative pundits, think tanks, business leaders and fellow politicians have blasted the Republican frontrunner’s support for government intervention and trade barriers as betraying the principles of capitalism supposedly enunciated 240 years ago by Adam Smith. The free-market philosopher “would be alarmed” by Trump’s trade policies, argued one writer in the conservative American Thinker last week. Greg Sargent (who is no conservative) wrote recently on his Washington Post blog, The Plum Line, that Trump “is not committed to the idea that free markets and limited government are the solution to people’s economic ills.” The Club for Growth has called him “the worst Republican candidate on economic issues.” At MarketWatch, reporter Jeffry Bartash calls Trump “more liberal than Bernie Sanders.”

Reuven Brenner holds the Repap Chair at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management.