[CTC] Trump’s Trade Vows at Risk Under Moderate Advisers, Trumka Says

[Arthur Stamoulis]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-trade-vows-succumbing-to-moderate-advisers-trumka-says-1490283529 <https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-trade-vows-succumbing-to-moderate-advisers-trumka-says-1490283529>
Trump’s Trade Vows at Risk Under Moderate Advisers, Trumka Says 

Labor leader says president has been slow to fulfill promises to battle currency manipulation and remake trade deals

Bob Davis 
Updated March 23, 2017 12:25 p.m. ET 
WASHINGTON—White House trade moderates are watering down President Trump’s tough trade plans, charged AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, and could undermine plans to battle currency manipulation and remake trade deals.

“There are two wings in the White House,” Mr. Trumka said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “There is a Wall Street Wing and the Trump-agenda wing. The Wall Street Wing is starting to hijack Trump’s trade agenda.”

Labor unions have long been at odds with Republican leaders and the AFL-CIO supported Democrat Hillary Clinton in last year’s campaign and gave her campaign $31.2 million, according to the campaign finance website Open Secrets. But Mr. Trump presents an unusual case. He successfully ran on positions skeptical of trade, arguing U.S. workers have been hurt by deals with Mexico and China, a view that aligns with organized labor and makes the new Republican president a potential ally.

Mr. Trump got a bigger slice of the union voted than any Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan, according to exit polls. Since the campaign, Mr. Trump has wooed union officials, meeting with them shortly after his swearing in. He last met Mr. Trumka at the White House on March 7.

The AFL-CIO chief’s comments suggest that the potential for an odd-couple alliance between Mr. Trump and unions may be diminishing. Mr. Trumka says he is looking to influence the internal debate at the White House and make sure the president sticks to his tough trade agenda. “Trump is going to be the decider,” Mr. Trumka said. “He’s going to have to decide whether to follow through on trade policy and rewrite the rules. We’ll call it either way.”

On his first workday in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump fulfilled a campaign promise to kill the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade pact negotiated under President Obama. Mr. Trumka says he applauded that move, though he says the real credit should go to labor and other activists who had long campaigned against the deal.

“With TPP, he was like the coroner,” Mr. Trumka said of the president. “The patient was dead. He signed the death certificate.”

Since then the president has moved slowly, the union leader said. He didn’t name China as a currency manipulator on his first day in office, as he had pledged, hasn’t started negotiations to remake the North American Free Trade Agreement and rarely mentions imposing steep tariffs on China and Mexico, as previously promised.

To Mr. Trumka, that reflects the influence of the “Wall Street wing,” including National Economic Council chief Gary Cohn, a former president of Goldman Sachs; NEC international economic aide Kenneth Juster, a former partner of the investment firm Warburg Pincus, and NEC trade aide Andrew Quinn. The appointment of Mr. Quinn, a former Obama administration trade official who helped negotiate TPP, was especially galling to the AFL-CIO chief.

“Quinn was one of the chief negotiators of TPP,” he said. “Here, he is in a position to set policy.” Breitbart, the conservative website, also has attacked Mr. Quinn’s appointment.

The White House didn’t respond immediately to a request for comments about Mr. Trumka’s remarks.

Arrayed on the other side of the White House fight, Mr. Trumka said, are Peter Navarro, an economist who wants to confront China and runs the White House’s small National Trade Council, and the White House’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, who views himself as an antiglobalist.

“The outward signs,” say the trade hawks are losing the battles, said Mr. Trumka, who says the AFL-CIO tracks White House power struggles. “The action slowed down significantly after the death certificate was signed on TPP.”

The AFL-CIO boss said that he knew it was too early in the presidency to declare Mr. Trump’s plans dead. Indeed, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has been working on a plan to attack currency manipulation—which some countries use to give their exporters an advantage in trade.

Mr. Ross plans to designate the practice of currency manipulation an unfair subsidy, individuals familiar with the plan have told The Wall Street Journal. U.S. companies would then be in a position to bring antisubsidy actions to the U.S. Commerce Department against nations using such practices. A spokesman for Mr. Ross declined to comment on the currency plans.

Any subsidy case involving currency practices is bound to be challenged at the World Trade Organization. But, in the short term, at least, could be a plus politically.

Democratic lawmakers, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, have long argued for previous administrations to take such action. A spokesman for Sen. Brown said the lawmaker “liked what he heard” from Mr. Ross on currency manipulation when the two met recently.

Mr. Trumka said he hadn’t spoken to Mr. Ross in several months, but said they had worked together in years past on trade cases when Mr. Ross was a steel-industry executive.

Currency manipulation is “back on the radar screen,” said Mr. Trumka, but he said he wanted to see the details to make sure any proposal was enforceable. “We’ll see whether [Trump] was genuinely committed to rewriting the trade rules in this country or it was a lot of hype and a campaign slogan,” the labor leader said.
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