Trump is actually the most pro-trade candidate in the presidential race

Some foreign governments are reaching an uncomfortable conclusion as election season comes to a head: their best chance for negotiating a trade deal — however arduous it may be — lies in Donald Trump retaking the White House.

While Trump derailed decades of free trade orthodoxy with tariffs and other hostile economic actions, his team often used those moves as leverage to strike deals with foreign governments — reforming NAFTA into the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, reshaping pacts with Japan and South Korea, and even striking a short-lived deal with China. Separately, Trump launched new free trade talks with the U.K. and Kenya.

Biden, by contrast, swore off pursuing conventional free trade deals out of fear of electoral backlash and a belief from his team — particularly his trade chief — that lowering tariffs won’t help the U.S. economy. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, is expected to largely maintain that approach, instead focusing on broader economic initiatives that help raise environmental and labor standards. That has foreign governments preparing for two very different relationships with the U.S. government — four more years of relative quiet on the trade front, or a whirlwind of disruption, duties and dealmaking. Some nations seem to prefer the latter, according to interviews with more than a dozen foreign officials whose work focuses on trade and economic policy. They were granted anonymity to speak frankly about the candidates in the lead up to the election.

Trump “is the deal man,” said one Filipino official. “Trump already agreed to initiate Free Trade Agreement talks with the Philippines in a previous strategic dialogue, so we are very, very optimistic that if it’s a Trump presidency, that his focus will not be multilateral [negotiations], but bilateral.”

Harris, by contrast, has “just been simply toeing the line, in terms of the policies of the Biden administration,” the official said. “She has not given any indication that she will change anything.”

If anything, Harris has taken less interest than Biden in trade and industrial policy over the course of her political career. And her campaign has yet to lay out a trade agenda as part of her economic plans, another signal it is not likely to be a top priority in her administration. To the extent Harris has discussed trade since becoming the presidential nominee, it’s been to bash Trump’s proposal for an across-the-board tariff on foreign goods, dubbing it a tax on American consumers.

The Biden-Harris administration’s unofficial “ban” on new free trade talks has frustrated allies who had hoped they would be more open to new tariff-lowering deals, which are critical for their domestic economies. While Trump is by no means a free trader, foreign diplomats also do not believe he would be as rigidly opposed to lowering tariffs, if the circumstances are right.

Trade optimism for a Trump presidency is most pronounced among some Southeast Asian and Latin American nations that hope to benefit from a renewed trade war between China and the U.S. — or play the two nations off each other.

The U.S. trade war with China “has benefited this region,” said Malaysian minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz, “especially Malaysia, and Vietnam and Singapore because not only are we part of many multilateral agreements but we [Malaysia] are seen as a country that is neutral.”

The sentiments stand in stark contrast to the conventional wisdom in Washington, where Trump is widely perceived as anti-trade and protectionist, while Democrats are viewed as keen to cozy up to foreign allies — diplomatically, if not economically.

But according to one Ecuadorian economic official, "If President Biden continues, and Democrats continue, very little will change.” Under Trump “there might be change, but we need things to happen very quickly.”

Some Latin American nations, in particular, expressed hope that a Trump administration would be willing to consider expanding the 2020 USMCA into other Latin American countries as a way to compete with China, which is expanding its footprint in the region. Countries like Costa Rica are eyeing a scheduled 2026 review of the agreement as a possible expansion opportunity.

Trade agreements “are not written in stone and we’re hoping there’s a greater possibility to improve” under Trump, said a Costa Rican official, noting “that's what happened with NAFTA."

RNC national press secretary Anna Kelly did not rule out the prospect of new free trade agreements with emerging economies in a second Trump administration, when asked for comment.

"Kamala Harris and Joe Biden are the most incompetent trade negotiators in history. They have completely failed to open foreign markets for our farmers, ranchers, and manufacturers,” Kelly said. “Donald Trump believes there are good trade deals and bad trade deals. Biden and Harris did nothing in trade to help our workers, farmers or ranchers. With President Trump, they got the best trade deals in history,“ Kelly added.

The Harris campaign did not return multiple requests for comments clarifying how she would approach trade agreements were she to be elected in November.

Some from Trump’s world are urging new arrangements. Mauricio Claver-Carone, a former Trump National Security Council official who previously served as president of the Inter-American Development Bank, wrote in a July piece for Americas Quarterly that a second Trump administration should “reimagine” more deals, like the Central American Free Trade Agreement the U.S. currently has with Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, and that the next administration should “focus on the comparative advantage and opportunities that each country in Central America presents.”

“After all, CAFTA’s narrowly defined manufacturing thread-lines did little to protect market access, as investors pivoted to China and Vietnam in pursuit of cheaper labor and production,” he wrote.

And Robert Greenway — former deputy assistant to the president on Trump’s National Security Council — told POLITICO in April that securing a U.K.-U.S. trade deal would be “a priority” in a second Trump administration, brushing aside questions about past failures to reach a deal.

Veterans of Trump’s first term insist that they successfully used anti-trade actions, from raising tariffs to disabling the World Trade Organization, as leverage to get new or revised trade deals across the finish line. Many trading partners expect that strategy would be supercharged in a second Trump administration, where his former trade chief, Robert Lighthizer, is expected to play a central role .

“For example, the U.S. could punish countries’ trade-distortive behaviors through tariffs and Trump could then opt to leverage that threat to get corrective concessions out of countries,” said Nazak Nikakhtar, who served as the Assistant Secretary for Industry and Analysis at the Department of Commerce under Trump.

Some economic analysts remain skeptical, however, that another Trump administration would cut many new deals.

“Trump isn't going to start doing bilaterals all over the world. I don't see that this is going to all of a sudden go to the top of the foreign policy agenda. It's not the priority, and frankly, the base is opposed to it and the Democrats are opposed to it,” said Eric Farnsworth, vice president at the Council of the Americas, a free-market oriented organization focused on the Western Hemisphere.

Meanwhile, more advanced economies that already have robust trade with the U.S. have more to lose from Trump’s trade wars. A deal that results from Trump’s brinksmanship and economically damaging negotiating process could be worse than just sticking to the status quo.

“We want to promote trade deals to establish some sort of economic order to maintain some free trade, ensure supply chains and perhaps to counter China,” said an economic official from an allied nation in Asia, granted anonymity to speak frankly about potential trade policies.

“Trump wants to have deals as a transaction tool as a result of threatening partners, and I don’t think we will get net positive results out of such a deal.”

Trump in recent weeks has singled out the European Union for trade criticism, saying they are “almost as bad” as China — his central trade foe from his first term.

Economists say Trump's plan to impose a universal baseline tariff on all imports would hit Europe especially hard , and warn its exporters are more susceptible to the uncertainty that a trade conflict would cause.

John Clarke, a top EU trade negotiator and a former head of the EU delegation to the World Trade Organization, predicted that “protectionist trends will clearly be worse under a second Trump term,” according to POLITICO Europe .

Officials from Canada and Mexico — the United States’ two biggest trading partners — are also raising concerns about Trump’s trade proposals.

David Paterson, Ontario’s envoy in Washington, said the universal tariff on all imports Trump has proposed would be a “ self-inflicted wound .” Arturo Sarukhán, former Mexican ambassador to the United States, took things a step further, saying such tariffs would “violate the USMCA” and “probably force Mexico to respond in kind.”