Nearly 7-in-10 likely Republican primary voters say the United States’ decades-long free trade policy eliminates American jobs, a New York Times/Siena College poll reveals.
About 69 percent of GOP primary voters said the American economy “has lost out from increased trade because it has cost jobs” while only a minority of 17 percent said “increased trade” has helped the United States by lowering consumer prices.
Free trade is especially opposed by working-class Republican primary voters.
Among non-college-educated white working-class GOP voters, 73 percent said free trade costs United States jobs while 70 percent of non-college-educated, non-white working class GOP voters said the same.
Likewise, more Republican primary voters, 47 percent, said they would be more likely to support a presidential candidate “who promises to protect workers by raising tariffs on imports” while 43 percent said they would be more likely to support a candidate “who promises to grow business by cutting taxes on corporations.”
The poll shows a deep change from nearly a decade ago when Republican candidates routinely sided with corporate special interests to tout free trade in order to drive down the prices of goods despite its costing millions of American jobs.
Republican voters’ immense opposition to globalization comes as the U.S. International Trade Commission detailed in a report last year how free trade has a crippling impact on America’s working- and middle-class communities, as the end goal is ultimately to cut costs for corporations while boosting profit margins with outsourcing schemes.
This year, former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer issued a memo calling on Republicans to shape a trade policy centered around boosting jobs and wages for American workers.
“… we must insist that the countries running large, persistent surpluses with us open their markets to our products and threaten otherwise to limit their access to America,” Lighthizer writes. “Buttressing these efforts to promote fairer trade, we also need a policy of carefully calculated tariffs on most imports to force trade overall into balance.”
Some Republicans in Congress have sought to make ending U.S. free trade with China a staple of any trade policy set forth by the GOP.
Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) has introduced the “Ending Normal Trade Relations with China Act” which would slap high tariffs on most Chinese imports to the U.S. by ending China’s “permanent normal trade relations status.”
The bill was also filed in the Senate by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO).
Similarly, Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR), Ted Budd (R-NC), Rick Scott (R-FL), and J.D. Vance (R-OH) have filed similar legislation called the “China Trade Relations Act” to end China’s normal trade relations status. Instead, presidential administrations would choose whether or not to authorize China’s free trade status with the U.S.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at
