Will Trump's "Golden Age of America" Arise from Closing Its Borders to Foreign Goods and People?

Donald Trump announced in his Second Inaugural Address: "The golden age of America begins right now."  On March 9th, the White House announced that after only seven weeks of Trump's term, "The Golden Age of America Is Here."

According to Trump and his followers, America will enter its golden age by moving from an open society to a closed society--particularly, by closing its borders to foreign goods and people by erecting barriers to trade and immigration.  

But the historical evidence of the evolution of golden ages--their rise and fall--proves that this claim is false because golden ages arise when borders are open, and they fall when borders are closed.  The historical evidence for this is nicely surveyed in a new book--Johan Norberg's Peak Human: What We Can Learn from the Rise and Fall of Golden Ages (Atlantic Books, 2025).  This book extends the argument of Norberg's earlier book--Open: The Story of Human Progress (Atlantic Books, 2020).

By looking at the rise and fall of golden ages around the world over the past 3,000 years, Norberg shows that social orders have flourished--socially, economically, and politically--whenever they were open to trade, immigrants, and ideas; and they withered whenever they closed up.

For example, the Song dynasty in China (960-1279AD) became the richest economy in the world because the Song emperors promoted free trade (both domestic and international) and freedom of movement.  The law protected the property rights of peasants and allowed them to move around rather than being bound to the land of a lord.  Consequently, agricultural production more than doubled, which supported the growth of cities.  The crowded cities allowed for a free exchange of goods, services, and ideas.

This was ended when the Ming emperors took over in 1368.  Peasants were no longer free to move around, and they were forced to labor.  The emperors instituted a "sea ban" through a series of isolationist policies.  Private foreign trade was made punishable by death.  The construction of sea-worthy ships was banned.  As a result, the Chinese economy shrunk by about half from what it had been in the Song dynasty.

Ancient Athens confirms the same lesson that golden ages arise in open societies.  As I have argued in a previous post, by ancient standards, Athens was a liberal or open social order.  Private property rights were protected by law.  Tariffs were as low as 2%.  International trade was extensive.  Foreigners were welcomed.  Indeed, some of the richest people in Athens were immigrants.  Athens was so open to the exchange of ideas that it facilitated the emergence of philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.  Judged by the standards of the Fraser Institute's Economic Freedom Index, Athens was on a level with the highest ranked modern economies such as Hong Kong and Singapore (Bergh and Lyttkens 2014).

This falls in line with what I have argued previously about the evolution of human progress through the Lockean Liberal Enlightenment and through a Lockean liberal open borders immigration policy.  In this way, cultural group selection favors the evolution of liberal open societies.

In denying all of this, Trump has initiated an experiment that will test whether setting up barriers to trade and immigration and moving to a closed society can really create a Golden Age for America.

REFERENCE

Bergh, Andreas. 2014. "Measuring Institutional Quality in Ancient Athens." Journal of Institutional Economics 10: 279-310.