CLEVELAND — The Republican Party on Tuesday inched closer to Donald Trump on trade.
The GOP has historically embraced free-trade policies, putting the party at odds with its presumptive presidential nominee. Trump favors protectionist policies, threatening to slap tariffs on goods manufactured overseas and pull the U.S. out of existing trade deals.
The Republican Party’s platform committee, meeting here ahead of next week’s presidential nominating convention, strengthened its language on trade enforcement, a major theme of Trump’s campaign.
The amendment, approved in a vote on Tuesday, even included “America First,” the slogan the New York businessman uses to describe his fiscal and foreign policy agendas.
“We need better negotiated trade agreements that put America first,” reported the Wall Street Journal’s Reid Epstein. “We cannot allow foreign governments to limit American access to their markets while stealing our designs, patents, brands, know-how and technology.”
But as with other aspects of the 2016 GOP platform, Republican officials downplayed Trump’s influence on the trade plank, arguing that his unorthodox views aren’t as outside the party mainstream as some political observers suggest. Indeed, party leaders emphasized that very few changes were made to bring the platform in line with the nominee’s views.
To avoid sharp intraparty divisions, the changes on trade did not include mention or criticism of the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, which Trump has threatened to withdraw from if he cannot acceptably renegotiate, or the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
The TPP is a pending deal with Asian nations championed by President Obama and many Republicans in Congress, including House Speaker Paul Ryan. Trump opposes the TPP in any form; presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton opposes the deal in its current form.
Andrew Puzder, a California delegate and chairman of the platform subcommittee on the economy, jobs and the debt, called Trump a free trader that simply wants to negotiate deals that are fair and better for American workers.
Puzder, who chaired the subcommittee four years ago, argued that Trump’s trade policies are in line with traditional Republican dogma and not much different from that of 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney.
“Mr. Trump has come out very publicly that he favors trade; we need trade. But we don’t need massive trade deficits. And the way to eliminate those massive trade deficits is better trade deals, and who can argue with having better deals, or enforcing the deals that we have,” said Puzder, who is CEO of CKE restaurants. “So, really you didn’t need to change much.
“Mitt Romney’s position on dealing with China, and on trade generally, is not all that different from Donald Trump’s,” Puzder added. “Donald Trump believes in trade, he just thinks we shouldn’t have these huge trade deficits — and he’s right.”
