Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, now a Republican presidential candidate, said he was leaning strongly against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a major 12-nation trade deal that President Obama is expected to put to Congress for approval later this year.
Santorum did not specifically say he opposed the deal — or even mention it by name — but when asked on “Fox News Sunday” about the the president’s trade deal, he agreed with the host’s description that he was “quite skeptical” of it. He said the deal would benefit the other countries at the expense of U.S. workers — precisely the people the GOP should be reaching out to, he added.
“First off, so much of that trade deal has nothing to do with trade. Secondly, the trade component of it is primarily lowering tariffs [and] ignores some of the bigger problems, which is non-tariff barriers like, for example, currency manipulation,” Santorum said.
He said the the U.S. was using an outdated strategy of “old-style trade deals in a new-style world,” which allows other countries to gain an unfair advantage through the deals. His past skepticism on trade deals has proven correct, he said.
“I voted for a lot of trade deals in Congress, but I voted against [the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement]. The reason why I voted against NAFTA was because I thought Mexico would manipulate their currency, which they did. Ever since then NAFTA has never been the deal everyone promised it would be,” Santorum said.
His stance puts him at odds with the GOP party leadership, who back the president’s trade agenda. Most recently, congressional leaders have pushed Republicans to pass revived Trade Promotion Authority, legislation backed by Obama that would prohibit Congress from amending trade bills, limiting it to a strict up or down vote.
A major theme of Santorum’s presidential bid has been that the party needs to adjust its economic message in order to reach out to more middle- and lower-income people. Cutting taxes and size of government are good ideas but “insufficient” as a political message, he says.
In the Fox interview, he said he also supported a higher minimum wage and policies to boost American manufacturing.
“We have to create opportunities for the 75 percent of Americans who do not have a college degree, who look at both parties and [the parties] aren’t taking to them,” Santorum said.
