How America’s Entrepreneurial Revolution Went Off the Rails

One of the most striking things about the posse of CEOs who accompanied Donald Trump to China this week is that they are almost as unpopular as the president himself. During the golden age of business in 1980-2008, it sometimes seemed as if businesspeople could do no wrong. Now, it seems that they can do no right.

Populists on both the left and right denounce billionaires as problems to be solved — or at least golden geese to be plucked. A new history of capitalism by Harvard University’s Sven Beckert dwells on all the ways that the “free market” system has not been free, not least slavery and colonialism. And the US is relatively pro-business compared with the European Union where bureaucratic regulation reigns supreme.