POLITICO Pro The GOP's divisive trade play

President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration might be driving Republicans to distraction, but they have a wedge issue of their own to stick to Democrats: trade.

And with control of both houses of Congress and 2016 on the horizon, the newly ascendant GOP isn’t likely to waste any time exploiting it.


When asked at his post-reelection press conference about where he thought Republicans and Democrats could work together, trade was one of the first things incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) mentioned. Other Republican leaders have echoed that sentiment.

“It happens to be, in their judgment, good policy and also something they can achieve results on by working with the White House,” National Foreign Trade Council President Bill Reinsch said. “And it’s something that’s going to irritate the left wing of the Democratic Party. How can you go wrong with that?”

Republicans know liberal Democrats have issues with global free trade deals, which they say can give rise to decreased wages and job losses. So when the GOP throws its wholehearted support behind President Barack Obama’s massive trade agenda — including efforts to conclude talks on the largest trade deals in U.S. history, covering nations across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, they do so knowing it will pit the left wing of the Democratic party against their leader in the White House and his allies among the dwindling number of trade-friendly New Democrats in Congress.

This dynamic might not change in 2016, when Hillary Clinton launches into full presidential campaign mode. As a senator, Clinton voted for trade agreements with Oman, Singapore and Chile, but against the Central American Free Trade Agreement, so she could well support at least some of the remaining parts of Obama’s trade agenda when the elections roll around.

Those elections could shift into full gear just as the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership goes to Congress for its approval — a deal that would overhaul and eclipse the North American Free Trade Agreement. Meanwhile, the 2016 elections could be bruising to the GOP in the Senate, with Republicans defending two dozen seats — 14 more than Democrats have to protect. Seven of those GOP seats are in states Obama won in 2008 and 2012 (New Hampshire, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania), and two more are in states the president carried just in 2008 (North Carolina and Indiana).

On the Democratic side, only two senators could be vulnerable: outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, of Nevada, and Michael Bennet, of Colorado.

Some analysts believe the GOP could try to put Democrats on the defensive in the run-up to 2016 by forcing them into difficult votes that could cost them support among labor and environmental groups in their base.

“The fact that it’s an issue that divides Democrats is icing on the cake,” said William Galston, a former policy adviser under President Bill Clinton who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

The powerful AFL-CIO has been among the harshest critics of pending “fast track” trade legislation, though it has been more coy about its positions on a pair of blockbuster trade deals with 11 other Asia-Pacific countries and the 28 nations of the European Union. To get those deals though Congress, Obama will need lawmakers to pass a bill allowing him to “fast-track” the agreements through Congress with straight up-or-down votes and no amendments.

The labor group has been on the warpath against that legislation, also called “trade promotion authority,” and is spending money on an ad campaign opposing it: “Fast track. It means forgetting working Americans,” reads one of the ads in the Washington metro’s Capitol South station.

The Sierra Club and other environmental groups are also against the legislation because of the potential regulatory changes that could be included in the Asia-Pacific trade deal, which they fear could roll back environmental protections.

With the backing of these groups, Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), among others, have been holding rallies and sending letters to assemble an anti-fast track army. They stand on the opposite side of the pro-trade New Democrat Coalition, which is losing 12 members because of defeats in the midterm election and retirements.

“The Democrats in the House generally represent really safe Democrat seats, so if I’m a Democrat, I’m not worried about Republicans coming in and knocking me out,” one congressional staffer said in describing the influence of labor. “I’m worried about someone challenging me from the left.” This dynamic has become even more pronounced as moderate Democrats have lost their seats, the aide said.

Galston said Democratic support for trade will boil down to an “intense local calculus.”

“[Democratic members of Congress] are going to ask, ‘Is this on balance beneficial or not to my district?’” Galston said. “If the answer is no, that doesn’t mean some of them won’t vote in favor of it anyway, but they’ll sure think twice. A more open trading regime is not equally friendly to all sectors of the economy and certainly not to all congressional districts.”

Meanwhile, Republicans could push to alienate Democrats on trade to secure more funding from big business groups with deep pockets, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers, which are big supporters of free trade deals.

It’s a question of fundraising, one Democratic adviser said, “which is why you’ll ultimately see a strong Republican vote in both chambers on [a] TPP deal and TPA [trade promotion authority], whenever that occurs.” And that dynamic also means that Democrats with strong labor backing are more likely to oppose the trade agenda.

For its part, the Obama administration is aiming to get half the Democrats in the Senate on board with its plans, the Democratic adviser said.

Many pro-trade Democrats are quick to note that trade might now be a wedge issue for both parties.

“They have that same problem in their conference,” said Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.), chairman of the pro-trade New Democrats, noting that there are some tea party conservatives in the Republican Party who balk at giving Obama more power. One congressional aide estimated between 15 and 17 Republicans in the House are opposed to trade promotion authority.

The Democratic adviser said as many as 16 Republican senators may want to avoid a tough trade vote, and the “presidentials” might also have to break off from a trade yes-vote. He argued that this means that Republicans can’t be too divisive on trade, at least in the Senate, because they need Democratic support to make up that deficit.

Reinsch, however, said Republicans shouldn’t worry about voting for free trade. “To me, the bellwether election was 2010, of Rob Portman in Ohio,” he said. “Portman is a former U.S. trade representative, the architect of a bunch of these free trade agreements, and he was running only a year after the recession began,” he added, noting that Ohio was hit harder by the economic downturn than any state other than Michigan.

“He was running against a guy who made this an issue in his campaign, who had unanimous labor support in his campaign, and what happened? Portman blew him away,” Reinsch said. “Find me a candidate who lost because of trade.” Portman is up for reelection in 2016.

As for Senate Democrats, only 19 voted for the last version of trade promotion authority in 2002, and only six of those still remain in the Senate, with four of them clustered on the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees trade issues. They include outgoing Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Bill Nelson (D-Fla.). The remaining two are Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.).

For Republicans looking to get fast track, “they’ve got to get Wyden,” the Democratic adviser said.

Observers generally agreed that the fact that trade is a wedge issue for Democrats would not be lost among Republicans. Reinsch harkened back to the days when Bill Thomas, who was the Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee from 2001 to 2006, really worked that angle.

“He thought it was a wedge issue,” Reinsch said. “He thought it was an issue he could use politically and also demonstrate to the voters that the Democrats were Neanderthal protectionists. … He did some things that kind of poisoned the well for a long time on that.”