For all the ways that MAGA has departed from established political norms, there is a throwback quality to President Trump’s extraordinarily hostile trade war. His ham-fisted efforts to shore up global U.S. hegemony in the face of growing competition, and Republican attempts to justify them, harken back to Washington’s Cold War insecurities, which in the name of containing communism produced enormous global suffering. A key difference, of course, is that Trump isn’t only waging his war against