Free trade is bipartisan target in 2016 election

Any doubts that Donald Trump has had a huge (as he might say) influence on the Republican Party were dispelled this month when Ohio Sen. Rob Portman came out against the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

There is no more respected member of what's called the Republican establishment: Portman is a confidant of the Bush family, a runner-up vice-presidential pick in 2012 and a former U.S. trade representative.

But Portman is up for re-election, and Trump has changed the dynamics of the trade debate. The senator voted last year to give President Barack Obama fast-track negotiating authority on trade agreements, which was intended to pave the way for pushing the 12-nation Pacific Rim deal through Congress. But early this month he said he was opposed to the agreement.

Even Portman's friends acknowledge that his reasoning -- that the TPP doesn't stop currency manipulation -- is specious: The former top trade official in the administration of President George W. Bush knows that such matters aren't the province of trade deals.

Republicans used to be the protectionist party. They authored the infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930. After World War II, when the U.S. emerged as a global superpower, both parties essentially embraced the nation's role as a leader in the world's economic recovery.

But a generation ago, Democrats, prodded by labor, began to change their stance because too many workers were being displaced by globalization. It was left to a couple of Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton and Obama, working with Republicans, to embrace and enact trade measures.

In this election season, however, Trump has set the agenda, and no presidential candidate is carrying a free-trade banner. The billionaire charges that America's "political hacks and diplomats" have been taken to the cleaners on trade deals that have cost millions of jobs,

He vows to undo Clinton's North American Free Trade Agreement, dump the proposed TPP and go after Mexico, Japan and China on trade. He has suggested a 35 percent tax on cars imported from Mexico. He also advocated a 45 percent tax on imports from China (he has denied that he made that proposal, but his words were captured on tape).

Such statements horrify traditional Republicans. "Hearing this demagogue talk about a 45 percent tariff on Chinese imports is arrogantly insane, a clear path to the results of the old Smoot-Hawley tariff of the thirties -- which made sure the depression lasted for a decade," said Bill Brock, a former Republican National Committee chairman and U.S. trade representative.

To be sure, a number of economists and trade experts have dialed back their unbridled enthusiasm for trade deals. The advantages are well advertised, and largely correct, but the problems for U.S. workers are more severe than most free-trade advocates have acknowledged. This is especially true for those in manufacturing and low-skilled, older workers, many of whom are drawn to Trump.

Steve Weisman, a vice president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a research organization with a strong free-trade bent, recently published "The Great Tradeoff: Confronting Moral Conflicts in the Era of Globalization," which tackles this dilemma.

Weisman still supports pacts like the TPP but says these will be achievable -- politically and economically -- only if "we address the workers who are getting badly hurt by the intertwined forces of technology and trade."

Trade deals, he argues, need to include better and more creative training programs for displaced workers, as well as other notions such as wage insurance, which enables trade-affected workers to take lower-paying jobs without losing lots of money.

Yet this sort of rational, balanced discussion is absent in the presidential election, which is dominated by the Trump view. South Carolina is a good example. Once a protectionist hotbed after its old-line businesses were devastated by foreign imports, the state now is home to the plants of huge multinational corporations such as BMW and Michelin.

Still, surveys show that most South Carolinians favor a tax on imported goods to protect domestic jobs and that the state's Republicans, even more than Democrats, are anti-TPP.

Trump trumpets his protectionism. That's a message that will resonate in financial and trade capitals around the world.

Previously:
• 02/19/15: On Planet Clinton, where everyone's a critic
• 02/09/15: Questions for Bernie Sanders' establishment guy
• 02/03/15: From steadfast Iowa to contrarian New Hampshire
• 02/01/15: Bush's journey from front-runner to straggler
• 01/27/15: Another election, more phony promises on taxes
• 01/19/15: How Cruz supporters differ from Trump fans
• 12/23/15: Why Trump and Cruz aren't Forbes or Cain
• 12/21/15: Speaker Ryan sails through the easy part
• 11/25/15: As the GOP candidates emerge Hillary's weaknesses will be revealed
• 11/05/15: OK, candidates: Ask the questions yourselves. Seriously
• 10/28/15: Imagine an endgame of Cruz vs. Rubio
• 10/26/15:Ted Cruz has a Ben Carson problem in Iowa
• 10/20/15: Will Paul Ryan follow James Polk's playbook?
• 10/20/15: If only Trey Gowdy could meet with Sam Ervin
• 10/13/15: Voters don't like revisiting the trials and tribulations of Clintonland --- but that doesn't mean Hillary can't win
• 09/23/15: Why Jimmy Carter couldn't win the South today
• 09/17/15: Gov. John Kasich's standout record in Ohio
• 09/03/15: Republicans chart 4 paths to stopping Trump
• 08/31/15: Here's how Biden-Warren sort of makes sense
• 08/28/15:Trump upends New Hampshire's substantive tradition
• 08/26/15:Jeb Bush is hugging the wrong president George
• 08/24/15: Underestimating Ted Cruz? That's a mistake
• 08/19/15: US holds steady in a world of economic trouble
• 08/12/15: Who will capture Iowa conservatives after Trump?
• 08/10/15: Debate fireworks that won’t make much impact
• 07/29/15: A plea for conservatives to speak from the heart
• 07/09/15: Ex-Im Bank's undeserved rap for crony capitalism
• 06/24/15: All presidential candidates should be in debates
• 06/03/15: Foreign policy traps await Republicans and Hillary
• 06/01/15: It's small stuff that wrecks presidential runs
• 02/04/15: Can Walker be president without a college degree?

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Albert R. Hunt is a Bloomberg View columnist. He was formerly the executive editor of Bloomberg News, directing coverage of the Washington bureau. Hunt hosts the weekly television show "Political Capital with Al Hunt." In his four decades at the Wall Street Journal, he was a reporter, bureau chief and executive Washington editor, and wrote the weekly column "Politics & People." Hunt also directed the Journal's polls, was president of the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund and a board member of the Ottaway community newspapers. He was a panelist on the CNN programs "The Capital Gang" and "Novak, Hunt & Shields." He is co-author of books on U.S. elections by the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution.