The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

WASHINGTON -- At their post-Civil War apogee, 19th-century Republicans were the party of activist government, using protectionism to pick commercial winners and promising wondrous benefits from government’s deft interventions in economic life. Today, a Republican administration promises that wisely wielded Washington power can rearrange commercial activities in ways superior to those produced by private-sector calculations in free market transactions.

According to the Financial Times, which interviewed him, Peter Navarro, head of the president’s National Trade Council, says an administr...