In 2016, Americans for Limited Government teamed up with the late, great Pat Caddell to test President Donald Trump’s trade agenda in a national poll performed Feb. 23, 2016 to March 3, 2016 during the heart of the Republican primary.
It tested a critical assumption made by Trump’s opponents: That Republicans supported the free trade agenda and would overwhelmingly oppose Trump on that basis. It found 59 percent of Republicans agreeing that “Over last two decades, free trade agreements signed by the U.S. were more of a benefit to other countries.” Only 4 percent said more of a benefit to the U.S. and another 14 percent said equally beneficial.
But it wasn’t just Republicans. 46 percent of independents agreed free trade was more of a benefit to other countries, with only 9 percent saying it benefitted the U.S. more and just 15 percent saying equally beneficial. Similarly, 35 percent of Democrats agreed free trade was more a benefit to other countries, with just 12 percent saying it benefitted the U.S. more and 26 percent saying equally beneficial.
Overall, it was 46 percent who said more of a benefit to other countries, 9 percent who said more of a benefit to the U.S. and 18 percent who said equally beneficial. In short, 46 percent who thought it was bad for the U.S., 27 percent who thought it was good and another 27 percent who didn’t know.
We all know what happened next. Trump easily won the Republican primary in 2016 on that basis and went on to defeat Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin to win the Electoral College as Trump did well with union and non-union working-class households, without which Republicans might have had great difficulty putting together a winning Electoral College map.
In short, without his America First policies on trade and promises on tariffs, President Trump might never have been elected in the first place. Naturally, now that Trump’s trade agenda is finally being implemented, the same losers from 2016 and 2024 are crawling out of the woodwork to point to the unsurprising crosswinds the President is encountering financially and economically as countries come to the table to deal with the U.S. on trade.
The trade policies are actually no surprise unless companies simply hadn’t been paying attention for the past decade to the new reality of American politics. We’ve hollowed out our industrial base and if there was ever a major war we would depend on our enemies for critical resources. Not even Joe Biden dared to remove the tariffs on China during his term in office.
As for the economy, following peak inflation there has been a recession in 11 out of 12 cases going back to 1948 usually withing a year or two, the one exception being the unexpected Covid recession which did not follow a peak inflation event, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
Still, that’s almost a 92 percent certainty that following the 9.1 percent peak inflation in June 2022, we would see a recession within a few years, if not one already. When you overheat the economy like that, a downturn is an expected feature. Suffice to say, this period had all of the hallmarks: a 10-year, 2-year treasuries inversion and followed by an uninversion (the uninversion is when unemployment tends to rise), unemployment increased by 1.3 million from January 2023 to more than 7 million today (read that again: unemployment has been rising for two years now), and consumer credit is in outright contraction, etc. but for whatever reason, the National Bureau of Economic Research, the nation’s recession bookkeeper, still has not recorded a recession, either indicating that was the extent of the slowdown and then inflation should resume as it normally does — or perhaps that the larger hit is still coming.
In other words, the worst could be yet to come, but if so, that very well might have been true even if Kamala Harris had won the election. Meaning whoever won the election was going to inherit a pretty weak economy.
Either way, President Trump appears to have no intention of throwing out the political and economic program that got him elected because a recession could be lurking. Instead, he says he is going to keep his promises, come what may.
It’s not a bad bet. Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Barack Obama all had recessions within their first couple of years in office and all went on to reelected relatively easily. If anything, it’s better politically to get an economic downturn over with as quickly as possible. Whereas the closer recessions come to the presidential cycle — see 1980, 1992, 2008 and 2020 — the worse it is for the incumbents.
President Trump promised tax relief and better trade deals in 2024 and he’s working for both, exactly as he said he would. The U.S. may yet have a downturn, but if so, that likely was unavoidable (it takes hubris to think such events are entirely avoidable) after the high inflation and weak economy that he inherited. All Congress and the President can do is put in place the best policies they believe can foster a strong recovery should the worst come and position the U.S. to be more self-sufficient on critical national security and military production lines.
Politically, Republicans in the long run would regret abandoning Trump’s trade agenda but many of them, having lost power within the party, will continue trying to demoralize the President’s supporters. In spite of those efforts, President Trump has already done what is necessary to bring our trade partners to the table, isolate China and the long run, the nation could ultimately be better off for it. We can thank him later!
Robert Romano is the Executive Director of Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
Reproduced with permission. Original here: President Trump And Republicans Would Have Never Won Pennsylvania, Michigan And Wisconsin Without The Trump Trade Agenda