A recent AP piece on U.S. Trade Rep. Katherine Tai's trade policies is entitled: "Top US trade official sees progress in helping workers. Voters will decide if her approach continues." It then leads off with this:
As the U.S. trade representative, Katherine Tai is legally required to avoid discussing the presidential election. But her ideas about fair trade are on the ballot in November.
Voters are essentially being asked to decide whether it is best to work with the rest of the world or threaten it. Do they favor pursuing worker protections in trade talks, as Tai has done on behalf of the Biden-Harris administration? Or should the United States jack up taxes on almost everything it imports as Donald Trump has pledged to do?
I'm not sure this tells the full story. I do agree that there is a difference between the approach of Trump and his Trade Rep. Bob Lighthizer on trade policy, on the one hand, and the Biden/Tai approach, on the other (although I don't think the article captures the differences very well), and therefore it is true that the election will decide the near term future of U.S. trade policy.
However, the piece makes it sound like these issues are of crucial importance for the election, as it states: "Voters are essentially being asked to decide whether it is best to work with the rest of the world or threaten it." While voters are certainly being asked to choose a president, I doubt this choice will tell us much about voters' trade policy views. Polling indicates that trade is not a top priority for voters and I'm skeptical that it will have much impact on who wins this election. Very few voters are likely to base their choice of Trump or Harris on the distinctions between the trade policies pursued by Lighthizer during Trump's time in office and those pursued by Tai now. I find it noteworthy that tariffs and trade are one of the few issues that Trump seems to genuinely care about, but even though he talks about them constantly voters still aren't particularly interested.
Trade policy is not totally irrelevant in this election, of course, and could affect a few votes here and there. But I think there are many more important issues. As an example, an issue that I think is clearly "on the ballot" is immigration, where the Republicans and Democrats are far apart. This is an issue that voters say matters to them, and is one of the key policies that will decide the election. I think it's fair to say the voters' decision on who should be president will tell us something about which direction they want to go on immigration (the electoral college distortion of these preferences notwithstanding). However, I doubt the election will tell us much about their preferences on trade policy.
