This is from the Daily Beast:
During his first six months in office, Donald Trump’s top trade official met with a host of companies, trade associations, and industry groups. He also carved out a little time for an unsuspected visitor: an employee of Ralph Nader’s former progressive nonprofit.
Lori Wallach, the director of the group Public Citizen’s global trade arm, met with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer in May and June, according to a copy of his schedule released through the Freedom of Information Act. In fact, she was one of the very few individuals with whom Lighthizer had multiple sit-downs during that time period.
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“I’ve known Bob Lighthizer for a long time because there are not a lot of people who are trade experts and who know the substance of the agreements and the laws very well,” Wallach said in an interview on Monday. “I have closely followed his work. I’ve learned stuff from his perspective.”
Can Lighthizer make enough changes to the U.S. trade agreement model to bring liberals/progressives on board? Phil Levy sees some possibilities here, but in the end is skeptical:
... So however much Lighthizer declares that he is solely concerned with pleasing the president, he would ultimately need to build a congressional majority to get any trade deal passed.
Could he draw substantial Democratic support? There are a number of reasons one might think so.First, many of the criticisms that President Trump has lodged against trade agreements and NAFTA sound much closer to traditional Democratic complaints than to Republican stances. As one example, the administration’s opposition to Investor State Dispute Settlement fits well with the thinking of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Lori Wallach of Public Citizen, two ardent critics of the TPP. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), another inveterate trade critic, explicitly spoke of a new trade coalition with “a lot of Democrats and some Republicans.”
Second, the president has shown an openness to working with Democrats, at least when it came to the debt ceiling; an immigration deal has proven more problematic. But if the administration does decide to cross the aisle for support, here are four questions to consider:
- Can Democrats join a pro-trade coalition piecemeal? The coalition of critics of recent trade deals brings together groups with diverse interests, from labor matters to investment regulation, environmental issues and beyond. If one group gets what it wants, will it back an agreement? Or hold out in solidarity with its coalition partners?
- Is there any overlap between what critics want and what the other countries would accept? While winning congressional majorities in support of trade deals has been a Herculean task, it is only half the battle. First, there must be a deal. Mexico and Canada have each set out their own “red lines” in the NAFTA renegotiation. Their demands are much more in line with the stances of traditional trade supporters than the critics'.
- Will Democrats be able to separate trade from other issues? While President Trump’s trade critiques may hold a certain appeal to fellow critics, Democrats in general have been less than enamored of the 45th president. In one recent poll of 900 adults, 89% of Democrats disapproved of the president while 7% approved. Congressional Democrats have stood in opposition to the president on key issues such as health care and tax reform. Would they really be eager to deliver him a victory on trade?
- Does an alliance with Democrats gain more votes than it loses? One reason the “deal” on immigration ran into trouble was that Republicans control both chambers of Congress. If they disapprove of a deal, it likely will not come to the floor. Many of the trade critics’ stances – and some of Lighthizer's – are antithetical to those of key Republican leaders on trade, such as Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican and the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. This is at least as true of key constituencies, such as the business and agricultural communities, whose support is essential to getting trade legislation through.
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None of this is to reject the goal of restoring bipartisan support for trade agreements. It just seems unlikely that such a coalition will emerge from the starting point of extreme trade skepticism that President Trump and Lighthizer bring to the table.
