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Okay, that was not the actual Washington Post headline. Instead, the front page article was headlined “Trump thinks he’s saving trade. The rest of the world thinks he’s blowing it up.”

Yet again we have a newspaper telling us the innermost thoughts of a politician, in this case, Donald Trump. And yet again, I will assert that the Post has no idea what Trump actually thinks. Since his family businesses seem to be gaining from concessions at least from China, it is certainly as plausible that he “thinks” a trade war is a way to make himself and his family richer as opposed to a route to establishing greater justice for the United States in the world trading system. (The print edition of this piece had the much more reasonable headline, “Trump’s trade moves shake global trade system.”)