WaPo:
When it comes to trade, the Trump effect was on full display in the Senate on Thursday.
Fully 37 Democrats voted to confirm the new U.S. trade representative, abandoning their partisan posture and instead embracing President Trump’s pledge to renegotiate existing trade deals and to scuttle those in the works. Those Democrats were joined by 45 Republicans who voted for Robert E. Lighthizer, a rare bipartisan moment coming a day after Democrats demanded an independent criminal investigation of Trump’s 2016 campaign after he fired James B. Comey as FBI director.
The trade issue has been turned on its head, to a position where there is now a bipartisan majority in Congress opposing the global economic strategy that has driven U.S. trade policy for the past 35 years.
“In our party, I think there’s an intensity about this issue that maybe wasn’t there a few years ago,” said Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Pa.).
Casey said that the 2016 campaign brought the trade issue to the fore unlike any presidential race in recent memory, and Trump’s sweep of the industrial Midwest sent a shock through the party that altered its view on how global deals should be considered.
The Senate on May 11 approved President Trump’s nominee for U.S. Trade Representative, a critical position ahead of renegotiations of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. The Senate voted to confirm veteran trade lawyer Robert Lighthizer by a 82-14 vote. (Reuters)
“I do get a sense that people are asking a lot tougher questions about trade deals, whether they’re going to indeed be helpful or actually impact, in a negative way, working-class folks,” said Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), who spent the previous eight years in Congress fighting a Democratic White House on trade.A staunch opponent of Trump on almost every issue, Peters embraced Lighthizer’s criticism of the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement and his more skeptical views toward multilateral trade deals of the past. Peters said he thinks that Lighthizer, who served as deputy U.S. trade representative under President Ronald Reagan, might be the most skeptical nominee of trade deals ever confirmed to the post.
