Quote The cynics and the doubters said it couldn’t happen. But just 500 days into his presidency, President Trump has demolished the fashionable and fatalistic theories of permanent secular stagnation.

Trump is presiding over extraordinary growth. G-7 leaders should notice.

By National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow

The Washington Post

June 7, 2018

President Trump travels to Canada to attend his second Group of Seven summit as the leader not just of the largest and fastest-growing ­G-7 economy in the world but also as the most important pro-growth reformer of our times.

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Thanks to the president’s leadership, America is entering a new era of economic growth and prosperity that promises to be larger and longer than we have seen in decades. The remarkably strong U.S. economy holds some key lessons for other economically advanced democracies.

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[O]ur friends and foes alike should recognize that President Trump has been remarkably faithful in keeping his campaign promises. From massive tax cuts to historic regulatory reduction to forcefully challenging one-sided international agreements, he has done exactly what he said he would do. There’s a simple lesson in President Trump’s record of achievement: Believe him.

Nowhere is this lesson clearer than when it comes to President Trump’s passion as a trade reformer. President Trump supports a vision of free trade that is fair and reciprocal. As a pro-growth reformer, the president understands that fair and reciprocal trade can knock down barriers, open up export markets and increase investment, which is the path to lasting economic growth.

But this vision has been thwarted in recent decades by a lack of reciprocity, along with unfair and often illegal trading practices, including massive intellectual property theft. Country after country has been putting our global trading system at risk by raising tariffs and non-tariff barriers, protecting sectors from automobiles to agriculture. So do not blame President Trump for taking decisive actions that protect our American workers.

Past U.S. administrations — both Republican and Democrat — have paid only lip service to dealing with this breakdown. Not President Trump. He has shown courage and decisiveness to prevent harm to the American economy and its workforce.

As a lifelong free trader myself, tariffs have not been my preferred policy tool. But at a time when nations have become so unwilling to play by the rules and restore reciprocity, tariffs are a wake-up call to the dangers of a broken trading system that is increasingly unfree.

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Read the full op-ed here.