The United States is about to plunge into recession, pulling much of the world down with it. The tariffs announced by President Donald Trump on April 2 will reverse decades of rising wealth based on specialization and exchange, based on little more than his unfocused feelings. Announcing his new rates, the president claimed they were reciprocal. But the tariffs supposedly levied by foreign countries were invented. Any system that calculates protectionist Brazil and free-trade Singapore as both imposing a tariff equivalent to 10% is too preposterous to merit serious refutation. O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts. Then again, this was never about judgment. It is about one man’s ability to channel the unfocused anger that can be found in any electorate at any time. The White House announcement, like all protectionism, rested on aesthetics, not economics. Hence the prominence given to the United Auto Workers. The UAW represents the angry but inchoate nature of protectionism. At the end of March, the labor union issued a press release exulting in new tariffs on imported vehicles: “We applaud the Trump administration for stepping up to end the free trade disaster that has devastated working-class communities for decades.” (Illustration by Dean MacAdam for the Washington Examiner) On the same day, March 26, the UAW furiously protested the loss of 600 steelworkers in Dearborn, Michigan. Their employer, Cleveland-Cliffs, had been the main supplier of steel to U.S....