Washington • Like Horatius at the bridge, or the boy who stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled, or the Dutch boy who saved the city by putting his finger in the dike — pick your analogous heroism — the Trump administration last week acted to stanch the flood of foreign-made washing machines that are being imported because Americans want them.
The stanching will be accomplished by quotas and stiff (up to 50 percent) tariffs, which are taxes collected at the border and paid by American consumers. Americans also will pay higher prices for washing machines made domestically by Whirlpool, which sought this protectionism, from which it instantly profited: In Monday’s after-hours trading, Whirlpool’s stock rose 3 percent.