President Trump goes orthodox with his trade re-election pitch

President Donald Trump’s place in the history books is likely to be that of the iconoclastic disruptor. He was elected in 2016 promising an economic agenda meant to give mainstream practitioners and policy makers tariff-derived palpitations. And by and large — on trade, certainly — he has delivered on the palpitations.

The disruptions are certainly continuing. But one remarkable development this year is that as he runs for re-election, Trump and his team are offering an oddly orthodox economic sales pitch.

On trade the president’s message to voters has shifted from one based on ripping up deals to one touting the self-declared benefits of his own recently concluded agreements.

What is ironic is that it’s a recipe that echoes the promises his predecessors made on behalf of trade pacts: that they offer a revolutionary path of growth, jobs and mutual benefit.

It turns out even protectionist presidents at some point can end up having to sell their own trade deals.

The best example of that is the loud-hailing now underway over Trump’s rebranded Nafta, the USMCA.

The numbers offered by the Trump administration are relentlessly optimistic:

• In his State of the Union address earlier this month Trump said the USMCA would create almost 100,000 jobs for auto workers.
• In a speech to the National Association of Manufacturers on Friday, Vice President Mike Pence cited administration estimates that the new Nafta “is going to create another 600,000 new jobs, including, we think, at least 50,000 manufacturing jobs right out of the gate.”
• In an interview with CNBC last week, Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, said the administration expected USMCA to have a “tremendous impact” on gross domestic product. “We’re expecting at least a half a point annually,” she offered.

Politics, of course, is an art more about spin than facts.

We are living through a natural economic experiment on trade unlike any seen in decades and one that’s only just begun. Hard data are likely to take some time.

The administration in the meantime has been touting its own calculations rather than independent ones.

The non-partisan analysts at the International Trade Commission last April offered a more muted assessment of the impact of Trump’s new Nafta. They see it adding 0.35% to GDP in its sixth year. And that it will actually contribute to a decline in auto production jobs while helping to create a relatively modest 176,000 jobs overall in that sixth year.

Importantly, the biggest economic benefit the analysts at the ITC found was the end of the uncertainty hanging over the North American trading bloc as a result of Trump’s persistent threats to end Nafta. Without factoring that end of uncertainty in the impact of the USMCA would actually be a 0.12% reduction in U.S. GDP.

That is, of course, not a prediction worth pitching to voters.