Why Trump’s trade case is working for him

“We’re going to be the people that create jobs for our country — not for China, and not for Mexico.”

Trump’s anti-free trade stance underlies much of his appeal to a core constituency: the working-class voters who have been absent from both parties until Trump.

“We’re going to bring jobs back from China,” Trump said at Radford. “We’re going to bring them back from Mexico. Before I’m finished, I guarantee you, that we will have Apple products made in the United States, not in China.”

Free trade is an item of dogma for Republicans, especially conservatives. Trump rejects that dogma, and he benefits politically.

“You’ll have some of these conservative people, like at National Review,” Trump said at Radford, “but they don’t have a clue. They don’t understand this.” Trump then put on his William F. Buckley accent: “They’ll say, ‘Trump is not a true conservative, because he wants to charge a tax to a country.’ Well, they’re taxing us, OK? So if they’re taxing us, I wanna charge the same tax.”

This is a direct appeal to the working class, which has seen wages fall in recent decades while the rest of the economy generally has grown. “Donald Trump will do more for the middle class and low-income workers” than any other candidate, former Rep. Virgil Goode said before the rally Monday. “It’s time we had a president who stood up for American workers first,” Goode said before blasting free trade.

Economists agree on nearly nothing, and honest economists admit that there’s very little they can reliably prove about causes and effects. The exception is trade: Paul Krugman, Milton Friedman and every economist in between has concluded that open international trade improves the welfare of all countries involved.

But the American public is more divided. Last summer CNBC asked Americans whether free trade had more drawbacks or more benefits — drawbacks won, 50-42 percent. The country tends to divide evenly three ways about trade: one-third saying it’s good, one-third saying it’s bad one-third saying it makes no difference.

Opinions on trade are divided, partly because the costs and benefits of trade are uneven. For a lawyer, journalist or doctor, trade basically means cheaper goods. “The economy is good for the upper class,” said Mike Benson after Trump’s rally.

For a manufacturing worker, trade also means fewer jobs and lower wages.

In Southwest Virginia, it’s easy to find opponents of free trade.

The region used to have a decent manufacturing sector, but around Radford and Roanoke, you can find plenty of idle factories. In December, Volvo trucks — a major employer — announced 700 layoffs. Back in January, a tire factory announced 31 layoffs, about 4 percent of its employees.

“We’ve lost a lot of businesses due to free trade,” Robin Graham told me at the Trump rally. Robin is a Kasich supporter, but she sees the appeal of Trump on the job losses created by trade.

“The economy hasn’t done great for a long time here,” Greg Radford told me. “It’s been survivable.” Radford believes immigration and free trade are the two main causes.

“We gotta do something to try to bring the jobs back here,” Trump fan Benson said after the rally. “The trade deficits are so huge.”

Warren Mills used to work at one of Volvo’s local suppliers. After his employer laid off 1,500 people during the 2008-09 recession, he left for a different job, at a packaging manufacturer in Dublin, Va. He tells of his old colleagues, “They were unemployed for some time. Some of hem did odd jobs, mowing lawns … .Some of them were unemployed for two or three years. I know of lot of them lost their homes, lost their vehicles.”

What’s Trump going to do about it?

“He’s a businessman,” Mills said. “So he understands how to negotiate. How to make deals.” Mills thinks Trump will use this skill to “bring companies back to the U.S. Make it beneficial for companies to manufacture here.”

Greg Radford cites Carrier, the U.S. manufacturer that just announced it is shipping thousands of jobs down to Mexico. “I think we should make it so tough on them that they have to sell their friggin air conditioners in Mexico. Keep it down there.”

Trump also cited Carrier. “They move to Mexico, they make air conditioners, they bring them across the border, probably taken by illegals” (yes, he’s arguing that Carrier will export air conditioners to the U.S. via illegal couriers). The problem, according to Trump: “No tax! Because these stupid people say, ‘We want free trade.’ If you want that, you lose every job. Every single company in this country is going to be gone.”

What would Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio do about this? “Nothing,” Trump declared, “because they’re controlled by the lobbyists, and they’re controlled by the special interests.”

Here’s where tough-guy Trump comes into play. “If they do that, we have to give them a hard time.” Trump said he would personally call the president of Carrier and say “every single time you sell an air conditioner” into the U.S. “we’re going to tax it at 35 percent.”

Trump then promised that almost every time a company president presented with this “deal” would say, “Mr. President, if that’s what’s going to be your opinion, we’re moving back to the U.S.”

There it is: targeted retaliatory tariffs against companies that upset President Trump. Even for a trade skeptic, it’s hard to put much faith in that view unless you put a lot of faith in Trump. Trump supporters do exactly that.

“He’s got balls,” said Sheila Benson, a small-business owner in Southwest Virginia. “He stands up for America.” Her husband Mike explains he trusts Trump on trade because “he’s not in bed with the lobbyists.”

“How are we helped” by free trade, Trump asked rhetorically. “The answer is we’re not helped … .We lose our jobs, we lose our money.”

But in Southwest Virginia, trade doesn’t just mean cheaper goods at the Wal-Mart. Volvo, after all, is a Swedish company. The trucks they make in this region ship things to and from Mexico and Canada. The tire plant that announced layoffs last year? Yokohoma Tire, whose parent company is Japanese.

When Mills left his job at a Volvo supplier, he was hired up by Phoenix packaging, a subsidiary of Grupo Phoenix, a multinational corporation opening its first U.S. plant.

And Greg Radford? He works from home in rural Virginia, developing “factory automation” applications for Siemens, the German manufacturer.

Trade has its winners and its losers. For the losers, Democrats have offered a safety net — which many working-class voters resent. Republicans have offered mostly odes to cheap goods. That doesn’t thrill everyone either.

“Look at my jeans,” Greg Radford told me, explaining why he’d happily pay more for American goods. “You know how much these jeans cost? Hundred bucks. For a pair of jeans that’ll last me 15 years … I got a Harley. I got two Harleys.”

Conservatives may scoff at this Made in America mindset as economically illiterate. But politically, it seems to be a winner.

Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.