President Donald Trump and Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey have found something they agree on: backing away from the highly controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, and beginning a renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
“I support President Trump’s issuing of an executive order that will pull the U.S. out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and his recent steps to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA),” said Mr. Casey in a statement responding to the moves earlier today. “NAFTA has adversely impacted middle class families in Pennsylvania and the TPP would have cost jobs and hurt income growth, which is why I voted against fast tracking the deal in 2015.”
A reworked NAFTA, he added, “must include strong enforceable environmental and labor standards; when businesses can exploit workers in Mexico, it is not only an affront to their rights, but places U.S. workers at a significant disadvantage.”
And just days after panning some of Mr. Trump’s cabinet picks, Mr. Casey even reversed the field on his GOP colleagues. “I call on Congressional Republicans, who have supported these agreements over many years, to work with President Trump and those of us who have long opposed these bad trade deals in order to finally level the playing field for our workers,” his statement said.
Mr. Casey has indeed been a foe of such pacts, so his position today was no surprise. He opposed, for example, giving then-President Barack Obama “fast track” authority to close a deal on TPP. (By contrast, his historically pro-trade Republican counterpart, Pat Toomey, voted in favor of that authority, though during last year’s election season said he opposed the resulting trade deal.) The Democrat also previously rejected other trade pacts passed by Mr. Obama.
But if Mr. Casey needed any additional incentive today, he didn’t need to look far. He is up for re-election in 2018, in a state where Mr. Trump scored a surprise victory last year. As the Washington Post notes, he wasn’t the only Democrat hailing Mr. Trump’s move: Others were Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin, who faces a 2018 re-election of her own.
First Published: January 23, 2017, 10:48 p.m.