Newt Gingrich has been a free-trade advocate for decades. Gingrich reverses course on trade as Trump VP chatter swirls The former House speaker, who helped pass NAFTA, tells POLITICO: ‘I basically agree with Trump’s speech on trade.’

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, under consideration as Donald Trump’s running mate, is dropping his decades-long support of free trade deals and picking up Trump’s strongly protectionist position.

“I basically agree with Trump’s speech on trade,” Gingrich said in an email to POLITICO on Friday.


Citing China’s taking of American intellectual property and the fact that the country is now in “a different era,” Gingrich said he had moved closer to the position of the presumptive Republican nominee.

That represents a significant shift for Gingrich, who championed trade agreements while a congressional leader, and a move that would smooth over one of the biggest policy differences between the two men who could form the Republican ticket.

Trump delivered a scathing rebuke of America’s trade policies in Pennsylvania this week, calling the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Gingrich helped approve while in Congress, “the worst trade deal" in U.S. history and vowing to renegotiate it. Trump also said he would pull out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact negotiated by the Obama administration.

“We allow foreign countries that cheat to export their goods to us tax-free. How stupid is this?” Trump said. “How could it happen? How stupid is this?”

Gingrich is among the candidates under consideration by Trump as a running mate and is currently undergoing a vetting process that includes requests to produce financial and political documents from him, according to a person familiar with the process.

Trump has publicly said he wants a running mate who has political experience, particularly in Washington, which Gingrich has in spades.

But that history includes Gingrich being among the highest-profile congressional supporters of NAFTA in the early 1990s, back when George H.W. Bush was negotiating the deal and Bill Clinton was pushing it through Congress. He even rounded up votes as the minority whip, calling himself part of the "Clinton-Gingrich Pro-American Growth Team.”

When the House approved the pact, Gingrich declared, “This is a vote for history, larger than politics, larger than reelection, larger than personal ego.”

In the email Friday, Gingrich said that today, “We are in a different era.”

“NAFTA was the final result of a process that began with Ronald Reagan in 1979,” Gingrich wrote. “It had 14 years of effort and was central to North American progress. We are now in a different era. 23 years after that vote it is clear that a lot of our trade efforts are destructive. When the director of national intelligence staff reports that China stole $360 billion in intellectual property last [y]ear, twice our total sales to China, there is something profoundly wrong.”

Gingrich has been a free-trade advocate for decades. In 2012, during his own presidential run, the Club for Growth wrote in a white paper on Gingrich that “evidence of any pro-protectionism support is scant.” The group noted that conservative William F. Buckley, Jr. called Gingrich in 1994 a “profoundly committed free trader.”

In 2000, Gingrich was also a proponent of normalizing trade relations with China, writing for the American Enterprise Institute that it was “the most important national security test Republicans in Congress will face this year.”

“Extending permanent normal trading relations will create the framework for a much closer relationship between the Chinese and American people,” Gingrich wrote at the time. “Rejecting the Chinese will serve only to alienate and further drive a wedge between American and Chinese societies.”

Trump said in his speech that China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization enabled the “greatest jobs theft in history.” Trump said he would label China a “currency manipulator” and instruct the U.S. Trade Representative to bring cases against China at the WTO, vowing to use “every lawful presidential power” to change trade policies with China.

Trump’s speech received immediate push back from the business lobby, long a pillar of the Republican establishment, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which live-tweeted rebukes of the Republican nominee in a highly unusual move. “Even under best case scenario, Trump's tariffs would strip us of at least 3.5 million jobs,” read one. “Under Trump's trade plans, we would see higher prices, fewer jobs, and a weaker economy,” said another.

Gingrich has previously moved somewhat toward Trump on trade. In May, on Fox News, Trump cited the same $360 billion figure for China stealing American intellectual property and said, “I think being tough about that’s a good thing. I think conservatives can be for very tough minded trade, not automatically yell, ‘Free Trade!’ where you get ripped off.”

Nick Gass contributed to this report.