Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump announced a 7-point protectionist plan of action to “bring back jobs” to America, which his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton said was a copy of her plans.
The divide between Mr. Trump and Ms. Clinton on trade appears increasingly fuzzy, though, Ms. Clinton sought to draw the line. “There’s a difference between getting tough on trade, and recklessly starting trade wars. The last time we opted for Trump-style isolationism, it made the Great Depression longer and more painful,” a release from by the Clinton campaign quoted her as saying. However, in a point-by-point response to the Trump plan, her campaign argued “they were ideas that seem to have moved straight from Hillary Clinton’s policy fact sheets to his teleprompter.”
Mr. Trump announced seven steps he would “pursue right away to bring back our jobs.” Under Mr. Trump, America will withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and will appoint the “toughest and smartest trade negotiators.” As president, he would direct the secretary of commerce to identify “every violation of trade agreements “a foreign country is using to harm the American worker.” The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) will be renegotiated; China will be named a “currency manipulator;” the US Trade Representative (USTR) will bring cases against China in WTO and in the USA on subsidy issues. “If China does not stop its illegal activities, including its theft of American trade secrets, I will use every lawful presidential power to remedy trade disputes,” Mr. Trump said, promising “tariffs and taxes,” as punitive measures.
The Clinton response said all these — or similar — measures were promised by her earlier, and she would pursue them as president. The point of contention is who will do it more efficiently and honestly, and whose track record inspires more confidence.
The bipartisan consensus on trade and commerce has been part of the mainstream of American politics for at least 30 years now. Though several presidential candidates in the last decade - John Kerry in 2004, and Ms. Clinton and Barack Obama in 2008 – questioned the practice of offshoring of American jobs, all of them pursued the same policies in government.
Mr. Trump invoked the founding fathers to buttress his argument. “Our original Constitution did not even have an income tax. Instead, it had tariffs - emphasizing taxation of foreign, not domestic, production.”
Ms. Clinton’s campaign also released a long list of how Mr. Trump has benefitted from global trade, at the cost of American workers. In a speech earlier this month, Ms. Clinton had said: "Trump ties are made in China, Trump suits in Mexico, Trump furniture in Turkey, Trump picture frames in India, Trump barware in Slovenia. I'd love to hear him explain how all of that means 'America first.'"
It is now clear that her campaign in the coming days will hinge on this core argument that Mr. Trump’s tirade against trade does not square with his behaviour.
That will roughly be the argument that Mr. Trump will use against her – that she has been a vocal supporter of trade deals and globalisation, and her husband Bill Clinton watched over a critical phase of globalistion in the 1990s. Mr. Trump is also tapping into the Democratic crowd that rallied behind Senator Bernie Sanders in the primary. “As Bernie Sanders said, Hillary Clinton "voted for virtually every trade agreement that has cost the workers of this country millions of jobs,” Mr. Trump said. “She praised or pushed the TPP on 45 separate occasions, and even called it the gold standard.”
Meanwhile, in an op-ed in the New York Times , Mr. Sanders said the “Democrats need to wake up.” “We need to fundamentally reject our “free trade” policies and move to fair trade. Americans should not have to compete against workers in low-wage countries who earn pennies an hour. We must defeat the Trans-Pacific Partnership. We must help poor countries develop sustainable economic models,” he wrote. “The notion that Donald Trump could benefit from the same forces that gave the Leave proponents a majority in Britain should sound an alarm for the Democratic Party in the United States.”
