TRUMP’S CONTRIBUTION TO SOUND MONEY: A fine, informative essay by a fine economist. The essay’s behind the paywall so try this flanking maneuver if you can’t reach it. In Fall 1989 I had the privilege of hearing Judy Shelton presciently discuss the Soviet Union’s decrepit economy. If I recall correctly, the Office of Net Assessments (SecDef’s think tank) put the panel together.

Excerpts:

…by insisting that the U.S. Treasury label China a “currency manipulator” and by promoting trade that is both free and “fair,” Mr. Trump may be laying the groundwork for a significant breakthrough in international monetary relations—one that could ultimately validate the rationale for an open global marketplace and restore genuine free trade as a vital component of economic growth…Mr. Trump’s emphasis on currency manipulation brings into focus the shortcomings of our present international monetary system—volatility, persistent imbalances, currency mismatches—which testify to its dysfunction. Indeed, today’s hodgepodge of exchange-rate mechanisms is routinely described as a “non-system.” Or, as former International Monetary Fund chief Jacques de Larosière termed it at a Vienna conference in February 2014, an “anti-system.”

This too:

To brand trade skeptics as sore losers is to malign them unfairly. To resent being victimized by currency movements is not the same as being opposed to free trade, nor does it signal an eagerness to engage in protectionist retaliation. It’s simply an honest response to incongruity: We need to reconcile global monetary arrangements with global trade aspirations.

Ms. Shelton wants to stabilize exchange rates.

Read the whole thing.