Gingrich flip-flops on free trade
Well, of course:
Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, under consideration as Donald Trump’s running mate, is dropping his decades-long support of free trade deals and picking up Trump’s strongly protectionist position.
“I basically agree with Trump’s speech on trade,” Gingrich said in an email to POLITICO on Friday.
Citing China’s taking of American intellectual property and the fact that the country is now in “a different era,” Gingrich said he had moved closer to the position of the presumptive Republican nominee.
That represents a significant shift for Gingrich, who championed trade agreements while a congressional leader…
Well, I’m all for people changing their minds in light of changing circumstances. But until very recently, I don’t think Gingrich had changed his position one iota (the article mentions the first rumblings as having occurred in May), although the “different era” he appears to be referring to did not just start a month or two ago. But the real “different era” is most likely the era that could be ushered in by Donald Trump selecting Newt Gingrich as his running mate.
Politics makes interesting bedfellows.
Here’s the rhetoric of Gingrich on this back in the 90s:
When the House approved the [NAFTA] pact, Gingrich declared, “This is a vote for history, larger than politics, larger than reelection, larger than personal ego.”
Ah, but nothing is larger than the personal ego of most politicians, I’m afraid.
Again, it’s certainly possible that Gingrich has had a bona fide change of mind and heart, and that he would have had it even without the candidacy of a Trump and the chance of his own elevation into a position of power after years in the wilderness. Possible, but hardly likely.
[ADDENDUM: Because it seems a couple of commenters may not have caught one of my points, I think I’ll emphasize it more clearly: Changing one’s mind on this would be a bona fide position to take if it’s a bona fide change of mind. But nothing has occurred since May””which as far as I can tell is when Newt Gingrich made his first reference to his change of mind””that would account for it except his own alliance with Trump and his ambition to be named by Trump to some post or other.
If he had changed his mind earlier and spoken about it, that would have been fine. The conditions for changing one’s mind on this have been present for a long long time, however. So it’s the timing that makes this suspect, not the change of mind itself.
If his change of mind were genuine, Gingrich would have offered an explanatory chain of reasoning. He’s far too smart and disciplined in his thinking to change his mind on a whim. Once again, the man reveals the slimy ambition intertwined with his core principles.
Ha, I think ambition is his core principle.
You may remember, for example, that he once also supported an individual health insurance mandate.
I am for free trade; heck I’m almost at retirement and I’ve got a really good-paying job.
However, I drive by the shuttered cotton mills and furniture factories in this part of the South and I can’t help but think that we need to do something to help the people who used to work there.
One of the things is to restrict illegal immigration. Jobs citizens won’t do. Nobody wanted to work at Ford until he offered $5/day. If only Americans were available then the wages would rise to fill those jobs, Mr. Trump notwithstanding.
Ann:
But not the same type of individual health insurance mandate. See this.
I agree. I think he’s bending with the wind. Twisting in it perhaps. I thought better of him. Ah, the temptations of power.
So what? I was for nafta too but I’m not a purist. Is that flat screen TV really so cheap when you have to pay all the social costs? Meth addictions, broken families and early disability cost more.
I did something you’ll all think is idiotic. I actually–snicker–looked up an example of what Trump has actually said about trade. (I’m just crazy that way.)
Verbatim:
“Hillary Clinton has also been the biggest promoter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which will ship millions more of our jobs overseas — and give up Congressional power to an international foreign commission.
“Now, because I have pointed out why it would be such a disastrous deal, she is pretending that she is against it. She has even deleted this record of total support from her book — deletion is something she is very good at — (at least 30,000 emails are missing.)
“But this latest Clinton cover-up doesn’t change anything: if she is elected president, she will adopt the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and we will lose millions of jobs and our economic independence for good. She will do this, just as she has betrayed the American worker on trade at every single stage of her career — and it will be even worse than the Clintons’ NAFTA deal.
“I want trade deals, but they have to be great for the United States and our workers.
“We don’t make great deals anymore, but we will once I become president.”
[. . . .snip. . . .] From http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/transcript-trump-speech-on-the-stakes-of-the-election-224654
I know: you all can’t believe a word Trump says, can you?? You just know he is lying.
Maybe that idiot Gingrich–having known Trump for years–thinks he has enough experience to judge that Trump means this. (Can you imagine? Everybody KNOWS that the only people who say they believe Trump are “dupes and shills”!)
Imagine thinking that Trump knows there is no such thing as free trade, and thinking that over the years the actual experience of NAFTA has taught us a lot, and that that sappy Trump actually wants us to THINK he wants to negotiate trade deals that are good for America! He wants us to THINK that he doesn’t want to “give up Congressional power to an international foreign commission”, as the TPP has written, like, in the actual words of the partnership. Of course, everyone knows that Trump is lying, that he wants his children and grandchildren–and all of us–to live under bad deals and foreign control of trade rules and regulations.
And negotiating?? Like using the carrot and stick routine, with the stick being tariffs and such? And making certain that those you’re negotiating with know you mean it? That’s not necessary! After all, Obama didn’t put any believable stick on his red line in the desert, and so naturally Assad ignored it. But you all know that Trump secretly wants his negotiations to fail, too. Being evil and all.
And Gingrich? Everyone knows that he has always wanted weak trade agreements, against American interests, and he has always wanted foreign commissions to control the rules for us. I mean, like you all say, this quote above from Trump is a HUGE flip-flop for Gingrich, right?
What a wacky guy! Gingrich is actually pretending–shilling–for the idea of negotiating trade agreements that are good for America, and against foreign control! What a sleaze!!
(Sarcasm off.) Like Gingrich, who has been and is now consistent in his views on trade, including the feedback and experience of living with prior agreements, I support the view in the Trump quote above. You know, part of what Brexit was about is the fact that Brussels has exerted more and more control over every aspect of economic life in the UK, including things like the shape of bananas you are allowed to sell and the kind of teakettle that is a crime to own.
anyone who thinks NAFTA was and is about free trade is simply ignorant …
I believe that comparing NAFTA with China trade is dishonest. America’s NAFTA partners do not indulge in blatant currency manipulation and theft of US intellectual property on a grand scale.
Also, as Ms. Neo-Neocon knows, personal intellectual beliefs are ‘sticky’–they are rarely changed at the first sign that they might be in error.
I’m not making a judgment about former Speaker Gingrich’s change of mind being purely motivated by political ambition until I see more evidence. Others who comment here may think they have mind-reading powers but I lack them.
Count me as another former free trade purist who has now come to realize it was almost probably a mistake. This must make me a power-hungry egomaniac.
Strike “almost”.
The problem with the idea that Trump can negotiate a better trade deal with China is that you’re overlooking the fact that it’s not just China he’s negotiating with, it’s all the buinesses that trade with China and the Congressmen and Senators that represent those businesses. “Fair trade” is a fine and noble idea, but what do you suppose Washington apple, Georgia peach, Idaho potato, Texas beef, Ohio glass, North Carolina furniture, Pennsylvania steel, Iowa corn, West Virginia coal, Florida meth and New Jersey spray tan interests consider “fair”? Don’t you think their political campaign contributions and lobbyists have a lot to do with what Congress thinks is fair as well?
There’s just no mathematical way that American workers can compete with workers in a foreign country doing the same job for 10c per hour…or $1 per hour. Even after factoring in the shipping costs, it’s cheaper to make things overseas if you have the knowledge and equipment. While working on a construction job a few years ago, I was shocked to see a 550 lb. Kohler cast iron bathtub sitting there marked “Made in China”. Apparently they can be made there and shipped to the U.S. cheaper than they can be made in Wisconsin. So by outsourcing their tub production, Kohler no doubt made the same (or more) profit, but American workers lost their jobs. I have no doubt that Kohler went to China and set up their factory for them, thus giving them the knowledge and equipment to build bathtubs. Now I understand that businesses are in business to make money, not to provide jobs but, OTOH, jobless workers can’t buy their products. We have …what? …almost 100 million able-bodied Americans who have given up looking for work altogether? Who’s going to buy Kohler’s bathtubs when 40% of the potential work force can’t find a job? There may come a tipping point when the U.S. economy just collapses.
The advantage that Americans used to have was that we designed machines to multiply our productivity – thus multiplying the value of our labor many times over. Productivity is why an American factory worker used to be worth $20 per hour. Somewhere along the way, though, Americans decided to sell (or simply give away) these machines and the knowledge to design, operate, and maintain them to China, Mexico, Bangladesh, and other hell-holes. (McDonnell Douglas, Boeing, Ford, and Caterpillar come to mind.) All this was U.S. government policy (See Ex-Im Bank). So now these countries are using our virtue – e.g. the knowledge to build things – against us. Well, by “us”, I’m speaking of those of who used to work for a living. The large multi-national corporations and the Wall St. firms that finance them seem to be getting along quite nicely, thank you very much.
Since the critical factor here is the knowledge to build labor-saving machines, I would like to see a lot stronger protection for “intellectual property”. For too long, Americans have been freely giving away their brain power in the area of machines and technologies and that has to stop. Foreign companies should have to pay royalties to the inventor(s) for the use of a time-saving machine.
I’d say that Trump has instructed Newt in the ways of real world economics.
Ted Cruz went through the same Damascus moment WRT H-1b visas.
What’s happening is that one, by one, the woolly nostrums about how international trade and immigrant labor imports truly function are being reset.
Brexit was a lightning bolt of reality re-connection.
Gingrich? The guy who wants “A Third Way” (one world government). The guy who thinks cap and trade (carbon trading scam) would be great for the economy. The guy who thinks Nancy Pelosi is a great person. That Newt Gingrich?
Conrad:
You may be missing the point of the post.
I believe I made it clear in the body of this post that changing one’s mind on this is a bona fide position to take if it’s a bona fide change of mind. But nothing has occurred since May—which as far as I can tell is when Newt Gingrich made his first reference to his change of mind—that would account for it except his own alliance with Trump and his ambition to be named by Trump to something.
If he had changed his mind earlier and spoken about it, that would have been fine. The conditions for changing one’s mind have been present for a long long time. It’s the timing that makes this suspect, not the changing of mind.
Micha Elyi:
My response to you is the same as my response to Conrad. You can find it here.
Christie and Gingrich remind me of the punch line to the old joke: “We’ve settled that. Now we are just negotiating over the price.”
If they had to sell out, I wich they had gotten better prices than they appear to have received.
I, and I think a lot of other principled conservatives with open minds, have always just mindlessly accepted that “free trade” was the proper principled position until Trump opened my eyes by making me actually examine my assumptions.
Here is a great primer for anyone that considers themself intellectually honest:
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/06/26/american-presidents-washington-lincoln-agree-donald-trump-trade/
If you are interested in free trade, here’s a primer, “On Trade, Trump Is an Encyclopedia of Error”.
To go just a tiny bit further, look up “comparative advantage”.
Incidentally, it is entirely possible to be for free trade in general, and opposed to mercantilit practices by the Chinese government.
It is sad to see how Breitbart has degenerated since the death of their founder.
Howard Hughes was a smart businessman. He leased – rather than sold – his revolutionary oil drilling bits until the patents ran out in 1951. Of course, back then, the U.S. Government actually enforced patents. These days China openly steals ideas patented in the U.S. and our government just shrugs.
I, and I think a lot of other principled conservatives with open minds, have always just mindlessly accepted that “free trade” was the proper principled position until Trump opened my eyes by making me actually examine my assumptions.
But free trade is conducted by cabals and bureaucracies like the EU. That is where the problems with NAFTA lie. So the anti NAFTA people have a point, but that is because the “free trade” is about as transparent as Hillary’s prosecution case.
It is sad to see how Breitbart has degenerated since the death of their founder.
That happens to all earthly organizations.
1st century Christendom degenerated once the apostles died off or got killed by the state.
If you are interested in free trade, here’s a primer, “On Trade, Trump Is an Encyclopedia of Error”.
Steve Chapman is as qualified to write on free trade and economics as he is on quantum mechanics. Not in the slightest. It’s pathetic that his opinions are alleged to carry greater weight than those of a successful businessman with property on several continents. Every Republican president from Lincoln to Reagan subscribed to a belief in trade protectionism. So did the Democrats, usually.