There has been some talk about the Tea Party and free trade. Dani Rodrik says: "Republicans who support the Tea Party are even more hostile to trade agreements than the rest." He cites to this Pew poll. Similarly, Robert Lighthizer says: "Strangely, for a movement named after an 18th-century protest against import levies, Tea Partyers are largely skeptical about free trade’s benefits — according to a recent poll by NBC and The Wall Street Journal, 61 percent of Tea Party sympathizers believe it has hurt the United States."
To some extent, I think these poll results are misleading. Rather than being opponents of free trade, I suspect that many Tea Partiers are actually extreme free traders who think that so-called "free trade agreements" are just another example of big government favors for large corporations. The problem with the polls at issue is that the specific questions don't distinguish free trade from free trade agreements. When I follow the links, I'm not sure I'm seeing the actual questions that were asked, but from what I can tell from the language that I do see, the questions are, for the most part, not about the impact of "free trade," but rather that of "free trade agreements" like NAFTA and the WTO. In the Tea Partiers' eyes, it may be that there's a difference between the two. To illustrate this, Ron Paul, a favorite of many in the Tea Party, doesn't see NAFTA and the WTO as free trade, but as "managed trade."
He's wrong, of course. While NAFTA and the WTO certainly do not lead to pure free trade (there are many exceptions to the general rules, and the agreements include a number of policies that have little to do with trade), I don't see how they could possibly be characterized as "managed trade," as I understand that term.
Nevertheless, being wrong about what's in trade agreements doesn't mean Ron Paul is skeptical of free trade. He clearly wants free trade. He just doesn't like the trade agreements currently being negotiated in the name of free trade, and furthermore doesn't believe that trade agreements are necessary for free trade.
So, while I would argue that Ron Paul and the Tea Partiers are exaggerating the difference between pure free trade and actual trade agremeents, and that their perception of trade agreements as some kind of market sharing arrangement is completely off-base, I think the reality is that although some Tea Partiers may be nationalist protectionists, others are unilateral free traders. But until the pollsters ask more precise questions on this issue, I don't know what the breakdown is between these two groups.
Having said all that, I recognize that the reason for their opposition to trade agreements (from the extreme free trade side rather than from the protectionist side) doesn't change the fact that they oppose trade agreements, and that this could make it difficult for the U.S. to sign any new ones.
