Trump is off to a slow start on trade promises
President Donald Trump keeps firing verbal broadsides at Mexico and China, but so far his new administration has not acted to keep specific campaign promises about trade policy.
Trump did not declare China a “currency manipulator” on his first day in office, as he had vowed, nor has he after his first month. Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, said on Thursday that his department was conducting a standard biannual review of the currency practices of China and other trading partners.
Trump also has not initiated the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada, something he promised to “immediately pursue.”
“There’s definitely a huge gap between rhetoric and reality,” said Chad P Bown, a senior fellow and specialist on trade policy at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Trump made trade one of his signature issues during the campaign, excoriating what he described as failed policies that have allowed foreign countries, notably China and Mexico, to profit at Americans’ expense. And he has not changed his tune since he moved into the White House.
“Take a look at Nafta, one of the worst deals ever made by any country having to do with economic development,” Trump told the cheering crowd on Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, held just outside Washington. “It’s economic undevelopment, as far as our country is concerned.”
Trump has fulfilled one campaign promise on trade, signing an order to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a unsigned deal that the Obama administration negotiated with Pacific Rim nations but had not submitted to Congress for approval.
But the absence of clear action on China and Mexico is striking, both because Trump’s language remains so bellicose and because the administration has moved quickly to keep many of the other campaign promises that it made. The “Contract with the American Voter” that Trump announced in October has proved in most respects an accurate guide to the first month of his presidency.
Trump has nominated a conservative judge to the Supreme Court and announced a freeze on federal hiring. He has reversed some Obama-era regulations and sharply shifted the government’s policies on immigration. The White House is pressing Congress to approve a new health care plan and overhaul the tax code.
Trade policy has emerged as perhaps the most notable exception.