Thank you, Jacob. A timely and necessary illumination of tariffs, a subject we indeed need to get to grips with. Everything you say is true but there are many other factors driving President Trump’s stance that must be considered.

We are not in Ricardo’s free-wheeling, small nation, small company, low tax, liberal (small l), unregulated 19th. Century.

Large mercantilist trade blocs such as the EU, and bad actor nations like Russia and China confront us.

China with its under-valued exchange rate, subsidised manufactures and exports, non-existent patent and intellectual property protection , slave Labour, disdain for the environment and encouragement of industrial larceny is gaming the system.

Multinational companies and Wall Street have also colluded with China in the hollowing out and de-industrialisation of the West.

The result for blue-collar workers and the middle class has been falling real incomes. The share of profits relative to incomes in western economies has been rising throughout the 21st Century. Our people are getting poorer.

This is not a left-wing rant nor a recent event. Sir James Goldsmith, no limp leftie, predicted just this outcome in his prescient little book, The Trap, published in 1997.

Trump at least sees today’s problem; his policy solution may not be perfect, it may be wrong. But Jacob, we must confront today’s world; 19th century economic theory and High Tory philosophy doesn’t cut our more complicated problems.

Our 30-year western decline is embedded here. For sure, policy errors, pure leadership funk, short-termism and scientific cluelessness have also played their part