I've got two more entries in my GOP presidential candidate trade policy monitoring exercise: Former Vice-President Mike Pence; and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who has no political background but seems to be polling well enough to get into the upcoming Republican primary debate. What are the chances that either of these two becomes president? Probably pretty small, but you never know, so here goes with their statements on trade policy.
Pence talked a bit about trade policy recently, which you can see on these two videos.
Host:
Part of engaging China, as you mentioned, is our trade policy. And I think trade policy has really been sort of indicative of the division in the GOP, the change in the Republican Party from more free trade, beat China with our economy and make friends around the world by making goods that are cheaper and better than communist countries do. That was sort of the theory of Reaganism and really much of the conservative movement up through recent years really. That does not seem to be the case, you know, the Trump administration passed something like $80 billion worth of tariffs on $380 billion worth of imports, and not just from China, but from other countries -- allies like Canada and Mexico. This was on steel, aluminum, washing machines, sort of you name it. And the Biden [administration] admits this has sort of been bipartisan agreement to some extent between the Trump administration and the Biden administration, who's left a lot of those tariffs in place. Would a Pence administration change that tariff regime? Would free trade and economic relationships -- Trans Pacific Partnership TPP, for instance -- is that in the toolkit of a Pence administration in terms of reengaging China, or putting pressure on China? How do you see America's trade policy moving forward?
Pence:
Well, I think it's a wonderful question. I'll give you a really short answer, which might be more welcome than my previous ones. My policy would be free trade with free nations. Look, I think you can create a tremendous incentive for reform by rewarding access to the most powerful economy in the world to nations that respect the right of contract, private property or free market countries. And ... I don't know why the Biden administration hasn't moved out on a free trade agreement with the UK.
...
The way we move forward with China, because I saw them move, is when we imposed those tariffs on Chinese goods coming into the United States, China came to the table, Heath. And a lot of people forget about January of 2020, before that pandemic struck our nation, China came forward with a Phase One trade deal. They haven't lived up to a whole lot of it from what I read in the newspapers, but it's what finally got them to move.
And I really do believe that the principle that I would bring to the Oval Office is free trade with free nations. Let's lean in to expanding access to markets around the countries that respect the rule of law, private property, the right of contract, free markets.
But at the same time, let's use access to the most powerful economy in the world to drive the kind of reforms -- not just open access to China's market, but also to drive the other kinds of reforms that will ultimately advance human freedom in that notion.
The China part here is interesting because he starts out by saying that the China tariffs worked by getting China "to the table," but then he seems to acknowledge that the Phase One deal didn't actually work very well, and then he goes back to arguing for using tariffs to bring reforms to China. For whatever it's worth, at this particular moment, I'm not sure anything is going to move any administration away from tariffs on China, and objective evidence about what has worked and not worked in recent years in terms of market access and other reforms in China won't make much difference.
The non-China part seems like it would take us back to a more traditional Republican trade policy. I'm not sure how much can be achieved, though, as a lot would depend on who is in Congress.
And here is Ramaswamy:
Ramaswamy:
... what I basically stand for is a level playing field. That's what we need. And I think that that doesn't exist. I think most people acknowledge that. I think that that's not going to happen automatically. That's going to require, by the way, a policy that I think is also really important that goes straight along with it, is reentering the Pacific trade relationships around the rest of the rim of the Pacific. The CPTPP. I think we should reenter it. I think this is a little bit different than ... the course of action taken by Trump and exiting the TPP. I think that was actually a poor decision.
Host:
Maybe one that makes more sense for the people over here, right? Because I think Trump canceled it because first of all, it wasn't fair to Americans, right?
Ramaswamy:
Exactly.
Host:
It really wasn't, but also it was unfair to people over here. It was beneficial to corporations, but not to the, you know, local farmers here, your mom and pop stores, who would have been completely obliterated by the TPP. So maybe a fairer version of that would make more sense.
Ramaswamy:
Exactly. And I think that I'm a silver lining guy. I think that I can use the leverage of the fact that we did exit to be able to say, alright, here's what we need done differently, in a number of the countries from Japan on down, to be able to say here's how we reenter that on fairer terms. And so that's what I'd like to see. And I think that's one of the things early on, actually, even ... forgetting about where we get to on China, the first thing that's easiest to do is actually to reenter the rest of that Pacific trade relationship, including the other members of the CPTPP. That puts us in a strong position from a trade perspective to then take a look at where we stand vis-a-vis China.
I'm not sure how familiar Ramaswamy himself is with any of the details of the TPP/CPTPP, but I do think that some experienced Republican trade policy folks could do a decent job with this approach, although it's not clear whether they would have better luck than Obama in getting a final deal through Congress. I do think it could be done, but it won't be easy, and miscalculations are possible.
