President Trump is being criticized for the economy’s lack of unambiguously clear progress so far. Inflation is roughly where it was when he was inaugurated, while unemployment is up. Real wage growth remains sluggish, contributing to the economic malaise that all too many Americans feel.

This is fair if one is thinking only of the short term, as admittedly many voters are.

Things aren’t much better for most Americans than they were a year ago when they wanted a change. It’s no surprise, then, that Trump’s job approval rating remains stuck in the low to mid-40s, with disapproval of his handling of the economy much higher than that of his overall performance.

That’s not, however, the right benchmark for serious analysts to apply.

Why? Because Trump is the first president since Ronald Reagan in 1981 to try to dramatically change the national — and with it, the global — economy. He is essentially trying to switch us from an economy based on consumption to one rooted in production. No reasonable person would think that such significant structural changes would be seamlessly and painlessly applied.

That was certainly the case with Reagan. He came into office with the nation suffering from chronically high inflation coupled with high unemployment. That toxic brew, labeled “stagflation,” had prevailed for over a decade, with both prices and joblessness slowly rising throughout.

Reagan’s campaign message was clear: Only a dramatic change in course would turn things around. Inflation had to come down, the private sector had to be reinvigorated with lower marginal tax rates and deregulation, controls on energy pricing and supply had to go. Doing the same things as Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter but expecting different results was, to Reagan, insane: He meant to break stagflation’s grasp on Americans’ pocketbooks and spirit.

Trump has been less direct about his agenda, to his detriment. But it’s not hard to see that his diagnosis and prescription is as dire and transformative as was Reagan’s.

Trump argues that America has been hollowed out — suffered “American Carnage,” if you will — because of trade, immigration, and foreign policies that put foreigners first. The rest of the world grew rich on American consumer dollars and national defense bills borne largely by the United States. Millions of Americans failed to garner any gains from this because of largescale, often illegal, immigration that kept wages down and job opportunities wanting.

Undoing that noxious, interrelated combination is the core of his second term agenda.

Implementing such drastic changes will take time regardless of who is in the White House. It’s also natural that the beneficiaries of the old order — immigrants, foreign nations, and educated Americans whose jobs were protected from foreign competition or were subsidized, allowing them to garner real wage gains and lower costs for products and services — would howl as their advantages begin to fade away.

That’s what is going on worldwide right now, whether the furious complainants are European leaders, media and university toffs, or illegal immigrants. With so much change afoot, it’s not surprising that Trump’s approval ratings are down. The only surprising thing is that they are not even lower.

Again, this is not new. Reagan suffered politically at home and abroad as the winners — think unions or industries that benefitted from tax loopholes — under the old system howled to preserve their status and power. His economic changes in particular........

© New York Post