He said he would. You can't claim to be surprised.
And today, he did:
“President Donald Trump moved to pull the United States out of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact Monday, fulfilling a campaign promise as he began his first full week in office.
Great thing for the American worker that we just did,” Trump said as he signed a notice in the Oval Office.
Trump ran for office pledging to overhaul U.S. trade policy, arguing that massive free-trade agreements have disadvantaged American workers. Since winning the White House, he’s aggressively called out companies that have moved factories overseas, vowing to slap taxes on products they then try to sell in the U.S.
“Some people say that’s not free trade, but we don’t have free trade now,” Trump said Monday.
Here's video of the signing:
For all the talk that Trump wants protectionist trade policies, this sounds more like a precursor to a complete renegotiation of the deal, just as he has announced his attention to renegotiate NAFTA. Trump is a negotiator who takes positions not for the purpose of clinging to them like grim death, but for the purpose of negotiating better deals than the ones currently in place.
Trade was one of the issues I struggled with when it came to voting for Trump. I'm a free trader and I've always been convinced that the freer trade policy is, the more it benefits U.S. consumers. Even if that means a factory goes to Mexico or somewhere else, it still benefits consumers if it means goods can be produced less expensively and thus purchased less expensively. Everyone always talks about jobs but few focus on the importance of purchasing power for the American consumer.
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That said, there isn't necessarily a conflict between free trade and negotiating better deals. Trump is the kind of guy who reads the fine print and recognizes when a detail others missed will present problems down the road. His predecessor, by contrast, is the kind of guy who will give up the store just to get a deal done so he can wave the piece of paper. (See "Nuclear Deal, Iran"). If Trump can negotiate an alternative to the TPP that still results in free trade policies, strengthening the buying power of American consumers while also benefiting the job status of American workers, I've got no problem with that. If he just throws it out and chooses to impose punitive tariffs on our trading partners, that will be the sort of thing that people think benefits them but really doesn't.
But if you're asking me to believe Trump can negotiate a better deal than 44, that's about the easiest thing to believe that I've heard all day. Let's get the talks started.
