The full text of this section of the platform is repeated immediately below. We share it, not because it is the last word on trade policy. It isn't. The trade debate has a long way go in this campaign and has already taken some important turns. Here we are going to stick to the three points highlighted above (our numbering).
1.
"Stealing Etc." The charge that China and others "steal" U.S. technology and otherwise use coercion to achieve commercial advantage is hardly new. Decades of National Trade Estimate Reports offer testimony to the problem, though they probably understate it. That is because, if a U.S. company makes a deal with a foreign government in order to sell into that country's market - even if under duress, it is more likely to defend the deal than to complain about it. The simple fact is that, when it comes to trade among nations, there is more to the story than willing buyers and willing sellers, there is government coercion.
2.
Currency Manipulation. Whatever you may think about this issue - and we doubt there is a reader of these pages who doesn't have a view - it is certainly not a partisan divide. Many of the champions of going after China and others as currency manipulators are well known Democrats like Senator
Chuck Schumer of New York.
Our own view is that, currency manipulation may be real and may often be very harmful, but it is not something trade policy can effectively address. The management of currencies involves much more than trade policy, and there is no
certeris paribus wand for the trade effect of currency values. So, this is one area where high-handed meddling will almost certainly make a bad situation worse. The itch to meddle, however, is bipartisan.
3.
TPP in the Lame Duck. We argued in an earlier entry that, with both leading candidates on record as opposed to taking up the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement in a lame duck session of Congress, it would be a mistake to do so. At this point, we are inclined to take the argument one step further. It now seems to us extremely unlikely TPP could be approved in the lame duck. There may be another era of good feelings in America's future, but, whatever happens on November 8, on November 9 that era is likely to appear only as a very distant mirage.
In short, it is not too soon to start thinking about trade policy in 2017. And if you make that intellectual leap, you are likely to conclude that, if there is going to be a TPP at all, it is one that will have to follow further negotiations.
***
The one trade line from Donald Trump's speech last night we'll highlight today is this:
"The most important difference between our plan and that of our opponents is that our plan will put America first. Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo."
We suspect he will take a lot of flak for that. We are not inclined to be too critical. We do not see it is a call to isolationism but rather a determination to probe more deeply the question, What is in America's interest? There are differences on that. We believe, for example, that TPP is in America's interest, and Donald Trump does not, but that paragraph of his is an introduction to a much larger discussion.
It also brings to mind a comment we heard several weeks ago in a different context. Just after the June 23 Brexit vote in the UK, we were talking to
Don Brasher. He's a South Carolinian, a trade expert, and someone who lived in Europe for several years. His reaction to the vote was neither to praise nor to condemn it, but simply to observe, "
We have now entered the post-post-World War II era," Indeed.