Perry: I'm In Support of Free Trade, But More In Support of Fair Trade

Interesting.

Ingraham asked Perry: "Do you think our trade policies have been working for the American family vis-a-vis China or other many of the other countries that have been growing incredibly fast right now?"

"I don't think our trade policies have been working for years, frankly, from the standpoint of being in the best interest of our families," Perry replied. "Do we need to trade? Absolutely. Am I a free trader? Yes. But I'm a fair trader. Just because we pass a free trade agreement with a country doesn't mean we need to put ourselves at a competitive disadvantage to make their diplomatic people smile at us. I mean we need to be tough traders. But Im telling you, we can't be tough traders, we can't be [a] foreign policy impactful country until we get this economy" turned around.

His qualification of "free, but fair, trade" signals him as not being on board with the free-traders' strong-form position, which, if I understand this right, it doesn't matter if our trading partners resort to protectionism, because that hurts them, while we continue to benefit.

The Republican Party has largely been in the strong-form free trade camp for decades. The party is by no means actually united on that, but enough of the party's leaders support strong-form free trade to make that the party's dominant position.

But is it a populist, or popular, position? Probably not. Or at least it's not so wildly popular, even within the conservative movement, that it should have a place of unquestioned dominance in conservative thought.

I'm skeptical (at least I am unconvinced) of the strong-form free-trade doctrine, so this doesn't faze me. But the free-trade league in the GOP might be worried by a protectionist signal.

No Big Deal? Ramesh Ponuru points out that Romney says the same kind of general thing, and John McCormack adds so did Tim Pawlenty.

So maybe this isn't much of a break after all.

posted by Ace at 05:48 PM

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