“President Trump scored a big victory for the American economy on trade last week.”
Trump’s trade triumph
By Stephen Moore
CBN News
July 28, 2018
The media and other Trump haters can’t seem to let themselves admit it, but Donald Trump scored a big victory for the American economy on trade last week. Trump and the European Union reached a handshake deal that is designed to lower tariffs on both sides of the Atlantic. They agreed to shoot for zero tariffs on both sides of the Atlantic. Sounds like freer and fairer trade to me.
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[W]hat we do know is that the EU has pledged to lower its tariffs and other trade barriers on American soybeans, oil, [sic] gas, pharmaceutical products, and certain manufactured goods. Trump promised to suspend some of the auto and aluminum and steel tariffs that he was threatening to whack the Eurozone with.
It gets better: The two sides also agreed in principle to find ways to combat “unfair trading practices, including intellectual property theft, forced technology transfers, industrial subsidies and distortions created by state-owned enterprises.”
These are the very trade violations that Trump has been railing against for years — but that no president has done anything about. We don’t engage in these anti-trade activities — Europe does, Japan does, and China does. Before Trump came on the scene most nations denied that this cheating and stealing were even happening. Any progress in ending these unfair trade practices is an indisputable victory for the U.S.
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[I]f Trump can solidify this deal with the Germans, French and the rest of the EU, and get a Mexico free trade deal signed, he can then isolate China as the bad actor on the world stage and force Beijing to stop its half-trillion dollars a year of cheating and stealing.
Does any of this sound like the results of a president who is “retreating?”
