For more than three decades, Donald Trump has made it clear that, if ever elected president, he would turn U.S. trade policy in a radically different direction. And he himself would be at the helm. “What I would do if elected president would be to appoint myself U.S. Trade Representative,” he wrote in his 2000 book The America We Deserve, when he was considering a run for president on the Reform Party ticket. “My lawyers have checked, and the president has this authority. I would take personal charge of negotiations…. Our trading partners would have to sit across the table from Donald Trump and I guarantee you the rip-off of the United States would end.”
Now, against all odds, Trump is about to become the president of the United States, and he has the extraordinary opportunity to upend an elite consensus that has shaped America’s global strategy since the second World War.
Trump has completed the triumvirate of appointments that will make up his team on U.S. trade policy, adding Washington trade lawyer Robert Lighthizer as U.S. trade representative to billionaire fund manager Wilbur Ross for commerce secretary and China hawk Peter Navarro as the head of the new White House National Trade Council. Corporate lobbyists and foreign envoys are busy scouring the writings and records of each to try to judge what it means for the future direction of U.S. trade policy.
They shouldn’t have to look too hard: Trump was elected for many reasons, but growing frustration over the negative impacts of trade played a big part. He won the election in the manufacturing states hardest hit by import competition, including Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And he won the highest percentage of union voters of any Republican president since Ronald Reagan in 1984. Since his election, union leaders have tried to cozy up. AFL-CIO leader Richard Trumka, who visited Trump Tower last week, recently said he would support Trump’s calls for renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada, among other trade deals. “Entire communities have lost their purpose and identity, and we have to fix that,” he said. “Working people are looking for a new way forward on trade.”
Source:-Politico
Now, against all odds, Trump is about to become the president of the United States, and he has the extraordinary opportunity to upend an elite consensus that has shaped America’s global strategy since the second World War.
Trump has completed the triumvirate of appointments that will make up his team on U.S. trade policy, adding Washington trade lawyer Robert Lighthizer as U.S. trade representative to billionaire fund manager Wilbur Ross for commerce secretary and China hawk Peter Navarro as the head of the new White House National Trade Council. Corporate lobbyists and foreign envoys are busy scouring the writings and records of each to try to judge what it means for the future direction of U.S. trade policy.
They shouldn’t have to look too hard: Trump was elected for many reasons, but growing frustration over the negative impacts of trade played a big part. He won the election in the manufacturing states hardest hit by import competition, including Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And he won the highest percentage of union voters of any Republican president since Ronald Reagan in 1984. Since his election, union leaders have tried to cozy up. AFL-CIO leader Richard Trumka, who visited Trump Tower last week, recently said he would support Trump’s calls for renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada, among other trade deals. “Entire communities have lost their purpose and identity, and we have to fix that,” he said. “Working people are looking for a new way forward on trade.”
Source:-Politico
