Earlier this month, the United States hosted a meeting of G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors in Asheville, North Carolina. Hundreds of journalistic outlets across America celebrated this important event by ignoring it entirely, while those that did mention it did so only to report on the controversial presence of the Russian finance minister. In the event, the Trump Administration used the occasion to push an agenda of economic deregulation, greater private-sector investment, reduced external imbalances, and myriad other policies. Cynics may sniff that the Administration, which has promoted unprecedented intrusions into private enterprise and trade-strangling tariff hikes, should practice what it preaches. And the best guide to what the Administration should be practicing may be the so-called Washington Consensus, advocated in Washington in the 1990s to guide developing countries toward faster development and growth.
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