SACRAMENTO, Calif — In a 1988 radio address praising Canadian voters for rejecting a political ticket that described a free-trade deal as “selling out Canada,” President Ronald Reagan noted that “the argument against tariffs” has not only “won nearly universal agreement among economists but it has also proven itself in the real world, where we have seen free-trading nations prosper while protectionist countries fall behind.”

Free-trade supporters (myself included) have touted that clip — and other Reagan speeches — as the incoming GOP administration plans a trade policy that seems lifted from Reagan’s Democratic and union foes from the 1980s. “Tariffs are the greatest thing ever invented,” Donald Trump said at a Michigan campaign rally in September. He called himself “Tariff Man.” He certainly is, as he just announced blanket tariffs on Canadian, Mexican, and Chinese goods.
Of course, tariff supporters are right that Reagan’s actions didn’t always live up to his ideals. In 1983, Reagan famously gave in to pressure from Harley-Davidson Motor Co. and boosted tariffs on imported motorcycles by 45 percent. The iconic company was in dire financial straits, concerned about competition from the Big Four Japanese makers (Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha, and Suzuki) and unable to deal with its debt load, quality problems, and cratering market share.
Advocates for tariffs still point to the Harley-Davidson protection as a success, as it reportedly gave the company time to rebuild. Harley even called for an end to the tariffs a year early, citing their effectiveness. In 1999, the Bill Clinton White House released a report arguing that the motorcycle tariffs were “evidence that American innovation and effective U.S. trade policy can reap rewards for American companies and American workers.”
That seems unlikely.  At the time, Japanese makers had misread market demand and amassed so much unsold inventory here that the tariff didn’t really affect their products for at least a year, as it ...