Who needs facts when you want to remake the world order?

ALL Team Trump really wants to do is to rewire the global financial system. Nothing wrong with vaulting ambition – even if one wonders about where this motley crew is going to land in this quest. If chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Stephen Miran’s thinking is any guide to last week’s drama, then the events should be seen as the opening salvo in the plan to bring well-paid factory jobs back to the US.

He proposes a radical economy-wide overhaul, because he thinks that if America’s industrial supply chains erode further, it will no longer be able to produce weapons and defence systems for national security. In his telling, persistent overvaluation of the US dollar keeps imports stubbornly cheap, and this rots away America’s industrial base.

And all this happens because America provides reserve assets to the world, all out of sheer goodwill.