As Republican Party’s civil war rages on, can a free trade agenda triumph over Trumpism?

A Republican congressman’s comments on the Trans-Pacific Partnership could indicate a shift against the nationalist-populist culture war the party has been leaning into

But it may be too soon to judge if the party can be brought back to the free trade agenda that it once espoused, before Trump took over

3-MIN READ3-MIN

Republican Tom Cole arrives to a caucus meeting with House Republicans on Capitol Hill on May 10. Cole said it was a regrettable that Congress did not pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2016. Photo: AFP

Robert Delaney

Robert Delaney is the Post’s North America bureau chief.

Published: 3:30am, 23 May 2023

Republican congressman Tom Cole showed some bravery earlier this month when he lamented the United States’ formal withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Framing his thoughts on the matter as a “personal opinion” during a House Rules Committee hearing on “China’s coercive economic tactics”, the congressman from Oklahoma asserted that failure to pass the TPP was “one of the great mistakes” of the 2015-2016 congressional session.

And here was the shocker that he added: “With all due respect to the Obama administration, which was for it, once the two nominees – one of whom was going to win – were against it, it was pretty much done and finished here and that was a missed opportunity.”

The other nominee was Hillary Clinton, who, after spending years as president Barack Obama’s secretary of state talking about the importance of that administration’s pivot to Asia, suddenly disliked the TPP when she realised that Donald Trump’s portrayal of the US-led trade and investment pact as a killer of American jobs had gained traction.

Clinton apparently realised how entrenched resentment of trade deals had become among the general electorate, but wasn’t sharp enough to see she had no hope of beating Trump rhetorically on this front. Faced with the success of Trump’s “America first” rhetoric – a policy that would eventually antagonise Washington’s most important allies – she simply walked away from the TPP, claiming that it didn’t meet the “high bar” that she expected.

Trump’s characterisation of his withdrawal from the TPP as “a great thing for the American worker” was as fallacious as his assertion that the trade war he started with Beijing in 2018 would bring jobs back to the US and cut the country’s trade deficit with China. Not to mention his portrayal of the Paris Agreement as a global plot to destroy the US economy, even though the ravages of climate change had been apparent for years.