House Speaker Paul Ryan reiterated to reporters this morning that he is broadly a fan of trade deals and, more specifically, that he would like to see the White House continue to negotiate with trade partners over President Obama’s proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and with Democrats still leery about passing it.
But, as he has said all summer, the Republican leader added that he does not think there are the votes in Congress to pass it now. “The last thing I want to do is bring up an agreement ... only to see it fail,” he said.
At Monday night’s first general election presidential debate, Trump was itching to talk about trade. Within seconds of his first answer he mentioned a loss of manufacturing jobs in the country, a topic that has been central to his campaign, and reiterated his strong opposition to modern trade deals, including the president's TPP.
“Our jobs are fleeing the country. They're going to Mexico, they're going to many other countries,” Trump said at the start of the debate.
He went on to almost immediately blast Hillary Clinton for flip-flopping on the TPP and insinuated that despite her stated opposition to the agreement, she may back it if elected.
“You called [the Trans-Pacific Partnership] the gold standard,” he said. “If you did win, you would approve that and that will be almost as bad as NAFTA.”
But Clinton rebutted.
“That is just not accurate,” she said. “I was against it once it was finally negotiated and the terms were laid out.”
Trade policy, and specifically the TPP, has been a vexing issue for both parties this election cycle. Opposition to the TPP has become a rallying cry and a passionate point of conversation for a diverse cross-section of Americans who span the political spectrum. It is the issue where Donald Trump has, arguably, most excelled in connecting with voters, and it has both Democrat and Republican politicians awkwardly traversing new positions misaligned with their traditional party views.
According to the U.S. Trade Representative, the TPP would eliminate “taxes and other trade barriers on American products” across 11 others countries, primarily in Asia and Oceania, and the White House is still lobbying members of Congress to finalize the agreement before President Obama leaves office.
A new poll from Politico and Harvard University out this month found “a substantial share of Americans (33% overall, including 47% of Republicans and 24% of Democrats) believe that, over the past ten years, free trade agreements have hurt their community.”
The study also found that among voters who knew about the TPP, 63 percent said they disapproved of Congress passing the agreement.
At times, Clinton has struggled to explain her position on the issue and navigate criticism from the unlikely pairing of both progressives and Donald Trump, who opposed the deal, while at the same time not completely bucking President Obama, who is championing it. As secretary of state, Clinton praised the TPP, but last fall, as pressure mounted from progressives, she announced she was formally opposing the trade deal. Still, her decision came only after the deal passed preliminary hurdles in the Senate, angering many progressives and raising suspicions about her belief on the topic. Her husband signed NAFTA into law, and in hushed tones Democratic operatives on all parts of the party’s political spectrum continue to question what she really thinks about the topic.
On the flip side, historically (and it remains the case for many today) traditional Republican voters and especially businessmen and women have been some of biggest proponents of free trade policies, and yet they were thrown a curve ball when Trump prevailed in the primary with an anti-trade message (and seemed to strike a nerve with Republican primary voters).
“When you have someone with his business experience saying that the trade deal is a disaster, you sit up and take notice. ... When Donald talks, people listen when it comes to business,” Alice Stewart, a Republican strategist and former top aide for Ted Cruz, said about Trump.
Asked about the divide within the Republican Party over the issue, Stewart added, “Opposition to the TPP does not mean you’re anti-free trade. It means the details in this plan are harmful to American workers. We have to look at it through that lens. It is not black or white.”
Democracy for America, a left-leaning progressive organization, told ABC News in a statement that it is skeptical of Trump’s stance on the issue, but hammered home how important it believes the issue is to voters.
“As soon as Donald Trump gives back the millions he made by stamping his name on shirts, lamps and other products made in at least 12 foreign countries, I'll take his opposition to the job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership seriously," Neil Sroka, spokesperson for the group, said in a email to ABC News. "Donald Trump is a fraud, and there's no reason to believe that his opposition to the giant corporate giveaway that is the TPP isn't similarly fraudulent.”
“That said, the attack that Donald Trump used against Sec. Clinton on the TPP and President Obama's support for it, makes clear how helpful it would be for Secretary Clinton to underscore her opposition to the trade deal by saying, clearly and publicly, that she opposes its lame-duck passage," Sroka added.
Larry Cohen, chair of Bernie Sanders’ legacy organization "Our Revolution," echoed this idea.
“Secretary Clinton has pledged to oppose the TPP. Her opposition is critical to defeating it in the lame-duck session,” he said in a statement. “Now and after election day her active support in lobbying members of Congress will be essential to defeating this disastrous trade deal.”
Cohen used to head one of the nation’s largest unions, the Communications Workers of America. While his former group is backing Clinton, Democrats on the whole are no longer able to bank on union support like they once were, in part because of the parties’ evolving views on this issue.
And despite losing to Trump in the primary, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican, has continued to work side by side with President Obama advocated for a bipartisan adoption of the trade deal.
“You know I don't think because we have this presidential election that somehow the Congress that's sitting there shouldn't be able to move forward on this agreement, particularly when I think it's vital,” Kasich said while at the White House this month.
Kasich went to argue that he understood voters’ skepticism about the deal. “There are a lot of people in America who feel very frustrated, they feel very vulnerable. ... And sometimes simple proposals to sell difficult problems sell, but they never work."
He added, “Blaming somebody’s loss of a job on somebody from Mexico that came in and took your job, that’s a simple way to scapegoat.”
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