Both parties have abandoned free trade

Both parties have abandoned free trade September 30, 2016

Whoever gets elected president will oppose free trade.  In fact, both parties are rivaling each other in condemning trade agreements such as NAFTA (which forms a common market with Canada and Mexico) and the not-yet-ratified TPP (which eases trade with Australia and Asian countries other than China).

Such a turnabout is astonishing, since Republicans have long championed free markets and Democrats have come around to agree with them.  Credit, or blame, for this new stance goes to the popularity of Donald Trump, who has roused the masses against American industries moving factories and jobs overseas and American products being driven out by cheaper imports.

I can see the appeal of a self-contained national economy, but getting there would seem to involve some dangerous tradeoffs.  If we erect trade barriers such as high tariffs and our trading partners retaliate, won’t that be economically disastrous?  American companies will suddenly lose a major part of their markets.  Prices for consumers will skyrocket.  After awhile, maybe new companies would take up the slack, but, in the short term at least, wouldn’t this cause recession and even more unemployment?

This is not my field, so I am open to instruction.

From Many GOP candidates abandoning traditional stance on trade | News OK:

It used to be that Republican politicians were proud to pronounce their support for free trade, because they knew that on the whole, robust trade policy benefits the United States and other countries. This bizarre election season has seen that approach turned upside-down.

The views of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump seem to differ not much at all from those of Democrat Hillary Clinton, who strongly favored the Trans-Pacific Partnership while secretary of state but rejected it last year for political purposes.

Trump reached his current perch in part by criticizing U.S. trade deals at every turn: Adopting TPP would be a disaster. The North American Free Trade Agreement is “the single worst trade deal ever approved in this country,” he said at Monday’s debate. Trade deals with China and other countries have been awful. The message has resonated.

And it helps explain why other GOP politicians are abandoning the party’s traditional stance on trade.

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