Trump On Trade: Will Retail Take A Hit?

Throughout the presidential campaign, president-elect Donald Trump stuck to a seven-point trade platform that included, in brief, the following talking points:

• Withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
• The appointment of trade negotiators to fight on behalf of American workers.
• Secretary of Commerce oversight of trade agreement violations by foreign countries that harm American workers.
• Renegotiation of NAFTA and withdrawal if favorable terms can’t be reached.
• The labeling of China as a currency manipulator.
• Bringing trade cases against China, both in this country and at the World Trade Organization.
• Leveraging presidential power to remedy trade disputes with China, specifically its theft of American trade secrets.

His beef with China was a hallmark of Trump’s campaign, but his adamant opposition of TPP was also on full display. TPP is a free trade agreement that would eliminate virtually all of the $6 billion in annual tariffs on goods from member countries, and according to some economists would boost U.S. spending power by more than $1,000 per household. Trump counters that TPP is a threat to U.S. workers and threatens to undercut U.S. companies. He’s doubled down on his opposition to TPP by reiterating his intention to increase new tariffs on imports from China and threatening to withdraw from North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) if it can’t be renegotiated to achieve more favorable terms for U.S. workers.

Image credit: "Donald Trump in Arizona" ed ouimette © 2016, used under an Attribution 2.0 Generic license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/