So much for the trade deal we were promised. President Donald Trump came to Britain, said all the right things, invited the king for a return visit, and then went home, leaving in place the highest tariffs in a century.

His justifications keep changing. Sometimes tariffs are a way to protect jobs, sometimes retaliation for overseas protectionism, sometimes a form of revenue, sometimes punishment for selling Americans things they want (that is, running a trade surplus).

I can’t be bothered to rehearse the case against tariffs yet again. If the loss of 12,000 manufacturing jobs last month in industries whose costs have gone up because of the tariffs doesn’t jolt MAGA out of its protectionism, nothing will. What is striking is that, even in Trumpian terms, there is no justification for the tariffs against Britain. The United Kingdom is too overregulated to undercut the United States on price, American trade is in surplus, and there are almost no U.K. tariffs on U.S. goods. If there was one country where the levies could easily have been lifted, it was Britain. Yet, for all........

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