You can’t recreate the past in a global economy, yet Trump’s Gilded Age fantasy will not abate, writes Eliot Wilson

One hundred years ago today, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill, delivered his first Budget. In it he returned Britain to the gold standard which it had suspended in the financial turmoil of the First World War, readopting the previous level of 77s. 10½d. to the ounce. This had originally been set by the master of the Mint, Sir Isaac Newton, in 1717.

It was probably the worst mistake of Churchill’s time at the Treasury. A strong pound made British exports, especially coal, too expensive, and the results were deflation, declining wages, unemployment and, a year later, the General Strike. The attempt to turn the economic clock back to 1914 failed because the world had changed.

A century on, it’s a lesson our current President of the United States would do well to learn.

Alas, Donald Trump is no historian

Donald Trump is not a reader. His favourite book is his own The Art of the Deal (1986), which he did not write and may not have read. Yet one of........

© City A.M.