Some have accused him of trying to turn back the clock in pursuit of a cheap populist ploy and have said that he simply refuses to acknowledge that America is now an information and service economy for which large trade deficits are the new normal. But voters are sensing that The Donald is right to sound alarm bells and that something radical needs to be done to revive manufacturing to make America great again. But his tariff solution is hardly the best medicine. To be honest, given the even worse solutions that are being offered by the left, Trump's instincts may be preferable.

Ironically, in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, the elimination of tariffs was a populist issue. A little more than a century later, the polls have reversed completely. Prior to the introduction of the income tax in 1913, tariffs were the Federal Government's principal source of revenue. During the long and contentious campaign to enact the 16th Amendment (which allowed the government to tax incomes for the first time since the emergency Civil War-era 3% to 10% income tax), proponents argued that the passage of a "soak the rich" income tax would allow the government to repeal the tariffs and thereby transfer the tax burden from the working class, who paid the tariffs through higher prices on imports, to the ultra-wealthy, who were the sole target of the income tax as it was originally conceived, packaged and sold.