WASHINGTON — This week President Donald Trump’s tough talk on trade made news and roiled markets, but the political impacts are harder to characterize. A close look at the issue shows Trump’s role as “a tariff man” follows two of the main rules that have come to define his presidency: it is aimed squarely at his Republican base and it helps to redefine the GOP on an important issue.
A cursory, high-level look at the poll data on trade shows a rare area of agreement in 2018 America. Numbers from the Pew Research Center suggest that Americans love trade.
Nearly three-quarters of Americans say “trade with other countries” is a good thing for the United States. That kind of agreement is hard to find on any topic, particularly one that’s in the news as much as trade. Read more here