Don’t Hold Your Breath for a New Democratic Trade Policy

Commentary by William Alan Reinsch

Published July 29, 2024

The question this past week has been whether the new likely Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, will pursue different policies from those of President Joe Biden. This column, obviously, will focus on trade policy.

Incumbent vice presidents running to succeed their outgoing teammates face a complicated challenge. George H. W. Bush surmounted the difficulties, while Al Gore did not-barely. The core problem is that the candidate has to explain to the public why they will be different while at the same time owning the previous four or eight years. They cannot repudiate their own administration without alienating millions of voters who put them there in the first place, but they also have to provide a convincing explanation of why they will be different and presumably better.

The result is almost always small differences in tone and emphasis rather than sharp policy shifts. This enables some signaling of change to voters without an abrupt change that would open the door to criticisms of flip-flopping, among other things.

In the case of Vice President Harris, the task of examining her trade policy is even more difficult because she has said so little about it during her term. Indeed, most analysts have been forced to dig up old Senate votes or statements she made while running for president in 2020 when she was trying to distinguish herself from the other Democratic candidates.

This in and of itself is telling-trade is clearly not a priority for Harris in the way it is for her Republican opponent. However, since former president Donald Trump makes it an issue in every one of his campaigns, she will have no choice but to respond and lay out her views, most likely in the debate, if there is one, and via the Democratic platform. (I will discuss both parties' platforms on trade in a later column, once the Democrats have produced theirs.)

Until then, we can examine her thin record on the subject and engage in the popular Washington sport of speculation. To start with the bottom line, it appears she will follow a similar path to President Biden's trade policy, but with some differences in emphasis and from a perspective best described as several steps to his left. In the Senate, she opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership and voted against the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), complaining that it was too weak on environmental issues. That's an important clue. Major labor organizations supported the USMCA, but many environmental groups did not. Her opposition indicates her commitment to a more aggressive climate policy, which would likely be a hallmark of her administration.

She has consistently criticized Trump's trade policy, including his tariffs, calling it "trade policy by tweet" as well as simply bad policy, referring to Trump's trade tax that made a wide range of goods more expensive for the average American. In this regard, she has generally followed the approach of other Democrats in criticizing Trump for being erratic and creating uncertainty while also pointing out specific consequences, such as the damage his tariffs did to farmers because of Chinese retaliation.

This is also a useful clue. Like many Democrats, Harris has not challenged former president Trump's overall worldview as much as she criticized specific actions she believes have harmed the U.S. economy. Since President Biden decided to maintain most of the Chinese tariffs and increase some of them, we should not expect her to dissent from that or to use tariffs as a tool. Instead, she will likely try to distinguish between Trump's bludgeon and the Democrats' scalpel-a more nuanced approach that will concentrate on minimizing the harm to Americans. Trump's proposed 10 percent across-the-board tariff will be an easy target for her, as there are few economists who would argue either that it makes sense or that it would achieve its objective.

Predicting her position on trade with China is easier because all politicians are pretty much in the same place-critical of China and supporting a variety of proposals to restrict trade and investment further. Since one of the Republican themes has been that Democrats are soft on China, she will likely play defense and take pains to show that accusation is not true.

Occasionally, she has shown her California roots-a major pro-trade state with substantial agriculture and high-tech exports, among other things. During a debate in 2019, she said, "I am not a protectionist Democrat. Look, we need to sell our stuff. And that means we need to sell it to people overseas. That means we need trade policies that allow that to happen."

This is not the policy the Biden administration has pursued: his advisors seem to have a remarkable lack of interest in exports and think of trade primarily in terms of imports and the harm they will do to American workers. She has not publicly taken issue with how the Biden administration views exports and most likely will not do so during the campaign because it would play into Trump's hands. Yet, if she becomes president, she might take a different approach.

I can also see two other things that might be different. First, she may return the United States to a more aggressive international digital trade policy that is more sensitive to the interests of California tech companies. Second, she may inject some vigor into trade negotiations, which for the past four years have been characterized by a remarkable failure to finish anything.

I have often said that the history of recent trade policy in the United States is that of the left and right ganging up to shoot the center. At this point, it is not clear whether Harris will end up as part of the center pursuing a balanced policy or as part of the left doing the shooting. We will probably find out soon, however, as Trump's preoccupation with trade will force her to respond.

William Reinsch holds the Scholl Chair in International Business at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

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