‘Follow the will of the people’

Donald Trump says any company that fires its employees and builds a new plant in another country to sell its products back into the U.S. should face a 35% tariff.

The proposal was on the ballot and the American people agreed. Now Congress should follow the will of the people and support it.

During the campaign, Donald Trump told everyone exactly what he believed.

He repeatedly slammed companies like Carrier and Ford that fire Americans and move overseas. He repeatedly called for a border tax, just as he repeatedly called NAFTA the worst deal ever made and TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a “disaster.”

Nor was Donald Trump alone. Virtually every Republican candidate in the presidential primary came around to Trump’s position.

Bernie Sanders campaigned on a similar platform. The insurgent Democrat blasted companies that send jobs overseas, and he forced Hillary Clinton to jettison the trade deals she had long championed.

Clinton then echoed Trump, promising an “exit tax” on companies that move offshore.

In this election cycle, we saw Democratic and Republican candidates up and down the ballot reject the Washington consensus on so-called free trade (which is neither free nor trade).

Tens of millions of Americans voted for these candidates — and elected one of them.

This is remarkable. For decades, corporate media, academia, pundits and politicians of both parties had unanimously supported trade policies that bled our nation of jobs.

But this November, the American people rejected these elites. They supported Trump’s call to tax products from companies that move overseas.

Congressional Republicans who would oppose it do so at their own peril.

They would betray the will of the American people clearly expressed in this election.

And they would confirm the belief that Washington politicians are out of touch, part of a rigged system that serves big donors rather than America.

The people have spoken. Congress must listen — and act.