Using the framework of the U.S. Constitution, Alexander Hamilton was instrumental in inventing the America that we live in today. With that liberty providing guidance, he fashioned the nascent American economy and its multifaceted engines from Wall St. to Main St. that interacted with the world of international trade and finance beyond. George Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury’s singular legacy in the realms of the banking system, taxes, tariffs and trade treaties is beyond doubt.

Today, the White House is occupied by a president who seems to be in tune with Hamilton’s vision of economic nationalism. In a never-ending series of tired leftwing clichés -- culminating in the current impeachment orgy -- Donald Trump has been compared to such modern historical monsters as Hitler and Mussolini, when in fact the more apt comparison would be to a fictional character, Ayn Rand’s John Galt, the uber-capitalist protagonist of her novel Atlas Shrugged.

In Rand’s “Objectivist” worldview the individual reigned supreme, as the “collective” stifled human liberty and economic prosperity, and it was only the absence of the state from the machinery of commerce that the individual was able to live a free and meaningful life. Ironically, Rand parted company with Hamilton’s view that a strong central government was necessary to accomplish these ends.

Alexander Hamilton was the first American proponent of the trade deal. He believed that while the United States was destined to grow and prosper while separated from Europe by three thousand miles of ocean, it still needed to maintain mercantile ties to the Old World. Witness Hamilton’s support for the Jay Treaty, the 1794 deal with the British crown concerning the integrity of American shipping interests. According to Hamilton’s biographer Ron Chernow, it was what we would call today a “most favored nation” treaty in that it gave American shipping some protection by the British Navy on the high seas and rights for merchants to trade in the British West Indies. Great Britain had modified her “system of colonial monopoly and exclusion” to the benefit of the young republic. In 1793-94 Britain had captured 250 American ships over trade disputes and forcibly impressed American sailors into service, branding them “deserters.” Francophile ex-Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson opposed the treaty. The “Jeffersonians” hated Britain and feared war with France.

Donald Trump’s enthusiasm for a sound “infrastructure” policy (despite an obstructionist Democratic House of Representatives) mirrors Hamilton’s own. The nascent republic’s roads were primitive rutted quagmires. Hamilton saw that for a vibrant American economy to develop, the flow of commerce must not thus be impeded. A student of antiquity (as all the Founders were) he knew that the road system the Romans had built was essential to the economic prowess of the Roman Empire. The construction of the Erie Canal and the national railroad system in the decades following his early death can be attributed to this initial Hamiltonian vision. Hamilton also supported his political enemy Jefferson’s 1803 executive deal to purchase Louisiana from Napoleon, thus doubling the size of the United States. Most Federalists opposed it on constitutional grounds. Chernow writes: “Hamilton was one of the few Federalists to support the action.” That fact tells you something about Hamilton’s views on economic nationalism. 

Trump has by now established a reputation as an economic protectionist, and an unpredictable one. His contretemps with the European Union, Mexico, and Canada over trade are a marked departure from the economic policies of recent presidents, as are his ongoing dealings with China. An obstructionist House of Representatives until recently has blocked the USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada) trade legislation designed to rectify the failures of the Clinton-era NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement). According to Industry Week USMCA guarantees “40% of automobiles will be manufactured in facilities where workers are earning at least $16 per hour” (thus benefitting the American auto industry), and U.S. dairy farmers will find new markets for their products in Canada. There will be new safeguards against currency manipulation. About 200,000 new American jobs should result.   

Trump’s handling of unilateral trade deals reminds one of Hamilton’s intricate style in negotiations with both England and France. Hamilton was a student of British mercantilism even as far back as his youth working in the trading houses on the waterfront in St. Croix. Trump’s conflicts with congressional Democrats on trade issues parallels the Hamiltonian-Jeffersonian struggle.

The best analogy of Alexander Hamilton’s dealings with the European powers of his time are Donald Trump’s with China. Similar to the early American republic’s merchant class suffering depredations to its shipping interests on the high seas, our problem today is China pilfering intellectual property through cyber-warfare, intimidating and stealing from American companies doing business there, and using the students it sends to study in American universities as tools to commit corporate and industrial espionage. The new “Phase 1” trade deal we’ve been hearing about will have significant safeguards to battle China’s penchant for intellectual property theft and currency manipulation. It will reopen Chinese markets for American agricultural exports. And it will encourage American manufacturing companies to leave China and make their products in the United States. Reuters tells us lately that the Chinese economy has suffered its slowest growth since 1992, a pathetic -- for China -- 6% growth for the third quarter of 2019. Trump seems to be holding all the cards.

How very Hamiltonian.              

Bill Croke is a writer in Salmon, Idaho.