Donald Trump Lays Out Protectionist Views in Trade Speech
29 June 2016 - 6:55AM
Dow Jones News
By Reid J. Epstein
Donald Trump offered a starkly protectionist view on trade
policy, pledging for the first time on Tuesday to scrap the current
North American Free Trade Agreement while saying he would label
China a currency manipulator and kill America's involvement in the
Trans-Pacific Partnership.
"I'm going to tell our NAFTA partners that I intend to
immediately renegotiate the terms of that agreement to get a better
deal for our workers," said Mr. Trump, adding that if they don't
agree to favorable terms, "America intends to withdraw from the
deal."
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee's trade
proposals amount to a wholesale rejection of longstanding
Republican orthodoxy on trade and leave the party with a candidate
arguing against policies that most GOP leaders have supported and
helped enact. His position also echoes the anti-trade-deal rhetoric
employed by progressive Bernie Sanders to attack rival Hillary
Clinton during the Democratic primary.
Mr. Trump's speech at an aluminum factory in suburban Pittsburgh
drew wholesale condemnation from both Democrats allied with Hillary
Clinton and Republicans who have long sought to boost U.S.
trade.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which often aligns with
Republicans, spent much of Mr. Trump's speech arguing against Mr.
Trump on its Twitter account, saying that Mr. Trump's trade policy
would cost 3.5 million jobs and result in "higher prices, fewer
jobs and a weaker economy."
Little of what Mr. Trump proposed Tuesday comes as a surprise to
observers of the 2016 presidential campaign. From the beginning,
the New York businessman has articulated nationalist policies on
the economy, trade and immigration that have driven his appeal,
particularly among working-class voters who have seen blue-collar
jobs disappear in an increasingly global economy.
Mr. Trump on Tuesday didn't mention the most aggressive trade
policies he touted during his primary campaign: a tariff of up to
45% on Chinese-made goods and stiff financial penalties on American
companies that move factory work to Mexico.
But he did seek to tie his own brand of economic nationalism
with the United Kingdom's vote last week to leave the European
Union.
"Our friends in Britain recently voted to take back control of
their economy, politics and borders," Mr. Trump said. "I was on the
right side of that issue as you know -- with the people. I said it
was going to happen, I felt it, while Hillary, as always, stood
with the elites. Both she and President Obama predicted that one
and many others totally wrong."
Mr. Trump's protectionist trade proposals place him
ideologically closer to recent Democratic presidential candidates
than to Republicans, who in 2012 placed enacting the Trans-Pacific
Partnership in the official GOP platform. Both Barack Obama and
Mrs. Clinton in 2008 said they would seek to renegotiate NAFTA,
though Mr. Obama didn't follow through on that pledge while in
office.
Mr. Sanders, in the Vermont senator's challenge to Mrs. Clinton
this year, boasted that he had voted against NAFTA -- which was
signed into law by former President Bill Clinton -- and said he
wasn't comfortable with any recent American trade agreements. Mr.
Sanders said he would reject the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a
position Mrs. Clinton has now embraced as well.
Write to Reid J. Epstein at Reid.Epstein@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 28, 2016 16:40 ET (20:40 GMT)
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