Vice-President Al Gore's thoughts on free trade are hardly proving a hot election issue as he campaigns across the church pulpits, school yards and machine shops of ordinary America.
But with each passing week a small band of trade analysts and diplomats in Washington are increasingly fearful that China could prove a battleground should he win and start putting flesh on the bones of his 'free-and-fair' trade ideas.
A series of seemingly unrelated events over the past week have given them fresh cause for a second glance.
Robert Byrd, one of the toughest veterans of the US Senate, slipped a highly protectionist provision into an agriculture spending bill as Congress mopped up its business for the year.
His move has the potential to overturn the way the United States administers anti-dumping enforcement. Anti-dumping, any free trader will tell you, is a bureaucratic nightmare that has long sparked rows between many in the region and the US.
In short, World Trade Organisation rules allow a country to slap on punitive tariffs if it feels a domestic industry is being harmed by cheap imports 'dumped' for less than they can be produced. The foreign industry involved gets its nose out of joint, long and costly proceedings begin and all the while free trade is blocked.