Trump: Cruz will Implement Obamatrade after the Election

The first time that the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) legislation came up in the U.S. Senate, back in the Spring of 2015, Cruz didn’t just vote for it. He championed the legislation’s cause publicly with a series of interviews, wrote a joint op-ed for the pro-Obamatrade Wall Street Journal with the initiative’s biggest congressional champion, now House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), and he very publicly challenged the initiative’s biggest conservative critic Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), saying in a radio interview in June 2015 that Sessions’ criticisms were “not accurate.”

TPA, or fast-track authority, is a change in the procedures Congress uses to ratify trade deals with foreign nations. TPA lowers the vote threshold for passage of a trade deal out of the U.S. Senate to just a simply majority—51 votes—killing the possibility for a filibuster. It also eliminates the ability for Congress to amend any such trade deals.

Given the fact that passage of TPA essentially guarantees the eventual passage of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP), and Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA)—among other trade deals—by lowering that Senate vote threshold and eliminating the ability for amendments, Sessions at the time argued that voting for TPA was voting for TPP and all these other deals, because it will be virtually impossible to stop them because a majority of senators will need to oppose them. Collectively —TPA along with each of the deals that it would fast-track — the whole free trade package has become known as “Obamatrade.”

To be clear, Cruz says he opposes TPP—and hasn’t taken a position on TiSA or T-TIP—but his prior support for TPA paved the way to keep TPP alive. He also, in that original op-ed with Ryan in the Wall Street Journal, praised TPP as an “historic” agreement.

Cruz didn’t just vote for TPA the first time — and then oppose it the second go-around, publishing an op-ed on Breitbart News the morning of the vote and making hardly any effort to stop its passage the second time around — but he also voted down an amendment that would have blocked the Chinese and other nations from engaging in currency manipulation.

Cruz was one of 51 senators who voted against the amendment, from Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), that would have ensured that it was “a principal negotiating objective of the United States to address currency manipulation in trade agreements.”

Trump told Breitbart News that he thinks Cruz’s vote against the currency manipulation blocking amendment from his fellow Republican, Portman, is more disastrous than his original support for Obamatrade’s TPA.  Trump said:

To me, that amendment is more important than the deal itself. With the currency manipulation and currency devaluation, that’s how nations are killing us around the world in trade—and he was singlehandedly responsible for stopping that amendment from being passed. Had that amendment been put in, it wouldn’t have been a good deal—but it would have been a much better deal than it is now. There’s no way this country can compete with those nations in the TPP because of the fact there’s no currency manipulation restriction.

This Trump interview with Breitbart News focused on Obamatrade — a key facet of his presidential campaign, as the issue is something he has addressed in nearly every single speech and interview and debate, even when unprompted — comes as Cruz has aimed to make it appear as though he stands with American workers when it comes to trade, despite his history on the issue. As Breitbart News reported on Thursday, a new ad from Cruz airing in Wisconsin makes the case that he stands for “fair trade”—not “free trade”—because the trade deals he previously backed harm American workers’ job prospects. It’s a particularly bold move from Cruz as it shifts the conversation — in Obamatrade champion Paul Ryan’s backyard — back to Trump’s signature policy issue, in which Cruz is aiming to prove to voters his viewpoint: That he thinks he’s better than Trump on trade.

Trump isn’t buying it, as he told Breitbart News—and made clear via Twitter—that he thinks Cruz is way behind him on the issue.

Trump said in his interview on Friday:

Ted Cruz is so far behind me in trade that he put a phony ad talking about how he’s going to get tough on trade. Number one, he’s in favor of the Trans Pacific Partnership—which is going to be worse than NAFTA. And it’s going to absolutely destroy businesses in our country and businesses in Wisconsin. Ted Cruz is totally controlled by the people that give him money. If you look at who those people are, those are the beneficiaries—not the people of Wisconsin or the people of the United States.

“TPP will be worse for Wisconsin than NAFTA,” Trump told Breitbart News. “Now, speaking of that—not only Cruz but Kasich voted for NAFTA. He voted for it.”