In the big, ornate hearing room of the House Ways & Means Committee last week, a businessman took over the chairman's table. "For the first time in American history," joked Clarence Randall, chairman of Inland Steel and head of the President's Commission on Foreign Economic Policy, "Congress has made a mistake. The clock is three minutes slow. The hearings are being run on the chairman's watch, which, I am embarrassed to say, is a Swiss watch."
Not all of Randall's colleagues were amused as he thus began his hearings on U.S. tariff policy. Two of them were Congress's vociferous high-tariff...