Newt Gingrich, a long-time free trader in Congress and champion of the North American Free Trade Agreement, said Friday that there’s something “profoundly wrong” with U.S. trade policy, lending his support to Donald Trump’s position on the issue.
When asked about his avowed support of American free trade policies—something that lasted through his 2012 presidential run—the former House speaker told Politico that the country is in “a different era”.
Twenty-three years after he voted to implement NAFTA, Gingrich said, “it is clear that a lot of our trade efforts are destructive. When the director of national intelligence staff reports that China stole $360 billion in intellectual property last [y]ear, twice our total sales to China, there is something profoundly wrong.”
Free-trade advocates hailed Gingrich for being profoundly right on the issue for years. In addition to his backing of NAFTA, for which he whipped votes in the House, he wrote in support of normalizing trade relations with China in the year 2000.
“Extending permanent normal trading relations will create the framework for a much closer relationship between the Chinese and American people,” Gingrich wrote in the Washington Post. “Rejecting the Chinese will serve only to alienate and further drive a wedge between American and Chinese societies.”
Trump has been fiercely anti-China on the campaign trail, and ripped a number of U.S. trade pacts, including NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, during a stop in Pennsylvania on Tuesday.
“NAFTA was the worst trade deal in the history—it’s like—the history of this country,” he said. “And China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization has enabled the greatest job theft in the history of our country.”
Gingrich said he “basically agree[d]” with the speech.
