Krugman: Trump is wimping out on trade


              In this March 31, 2017, photo, President Donald Trump listens during a meeting with the National Association of Manufacturers in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington. Slim majorities of Americans favor independent investigations into Trump’s relationship with the Russian government and possible attempts by Russia to influence last year’s election according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
In this March 31, 2017, photo, President Donald Trump listens during a meeting with the National Association of Manufacturers in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington. Slim majorities of Americans favor independent investigations into Trump’s relationship with the Russian government and possible attempts by Russia to influence last year’s election according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

During the campaign, Donald Trump talked loudly and often about how he was going to renegotiate the United States' "horrible trade deals," bringing back millions of good jobs. So far, however, nothing has happened. Not only is Trumpist trade policy - Trumptrade? - nowhere to be seen in practice; there isn't even any indication of what it will involve.

So on Friday the White House scheduled a ceremony in which Trump would sign two new executive orders on trade. The goal, presumably, was to counteract the growing impression that his bombast on trade was sound and fury signifying nothing.

Unfortunately, the executive orders in question were, to use the technical term, nothingburgers. One called for a report on the causes of the trade deficit; wait, they're just starting to study the issue? The other addressed some minor issues of tariff collection, and its content apparently duplicated an act President Barack Obama already signed last year.

Not surprisingly, reporters at the event questioned the president, not about trade, but about Michael Flynn and the Russia connection. Trump then walked out of the room - without signing the orders. (Vice President Mike Pence gathered them up, and the White House claims they were signed later.)

The fiasco perfectly encapsulated what's looking more and more like a failed agenda.

Business seems to have decided that Trump is a paper tiger on trade: The flow of corporate relocations to Mexico, which slowed briefly while CEOs tried to curry favor with the new president, has resumed. Trade policy by tweet, it appears, has run its course.

Investors seem to have reached the same conclusion: the Mexican peso plunged 16 percent after the election, but since Inauguration Day it has recovered almost all the lost ground. And last week, a draft proposal for revising the North American Free Trade Agreement circulated with only modest tweaks to what candidate Trump called the "worst trade deal" ever signed.

This surely isn't what working-class Trump supporters thought they were voting for. So Trumpist trade policy can be summarized as "talk loudly and carry a small stick" for two reasons.

When Trump was railing against trade deals, he had no idea what he was talking about. Listening to the Tweeter-in-chief, you'd think that NAFTA was a big U.S. giveaway which got nothing in return. In fact, Mexico drastically cut its tariffs on goods imported from the U.S., in return for much smaller cuts on the U.S. side.

Or take Trump's repeated claims that China gains a competitive advantage by manipulating its currency. That was true six years ago, but it's not true now.

Trump is finding out that those grossly unfair trade deals he promised to renegotiate aren't all that unfair, and trade is deeply embedded in our economy.

Consider the case of automobiles. At this point it makes little sense to talk about a U.S. auto industry, a Canadian auto industry or a Mexican auto industry. What we have instead is a tightly integrated North American industry, in which vehicles and components crisscross the continent, with almost every finished car containing components from all three nations.

Does it have to be this way? No. Slap on 30 percent tariffs, and after a few years those national industries would separate again. But the transition would be chaotic and painful.

At a deep level, Trumptrade is running into the same wall that caused Trumpcare to crash and burn: Trump came into office talking big, sure that his predecessors had messed everything up and he - he alone - could do far better.

But governing America isn't like reality TV. A few weeks ago Trump whined, "Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated." Now, one suspects, he's saying the same thing about trade policy.

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