Pat Buchanan: Why Trump Is Routing The Free Traders

Patrick J. Buchanan
Jul. 01, 2016

In Tuesday's indictment of free trade as virtual economic treason, The Donald has really set the cat down among the pigeons. [Full Transcript| YouTube]

For, in denouncing NAFTA, the WTO, MFN for China and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, all backed by Bush I and II, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, Trump is all but calling his own party leaders dunderheads and losers.

And he seems to be winning the argument.

As he calls for the repudiation of "globalism" and a return to "Americanism," a Republican Congress renders itself mute on whether it will even vote on the TPP this year.

On trade, Bernie Sanders is closer to Trump. Even Hillary Clinton has begun to renounce a TPP she once called the "gold standard" of trade deals.

Where have all the troubadours of free trade gone? Why do economic patriots seem ascendant? Is this like the Cold War, where the other side gets up and goes home?

Answer. As Trump pointed out in Monessen in the Mon Valley of Pennsylvania, the returns from free trade are in, and the results are rotten.

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