Opinion: Trump and Harris should go on offense on trade strategy

On the campaign trail, the Trump-Vance and Harris-Walz tickets are beginning to talk about trade policy. To win swing-state voters, both are pitching the fantasy that they will revive American manufacturing with tariffs.

Neither has said anything about opening foreign markets to U.S. exports.

After eight years of letting two administrations hide behind their tariff fantasies, it’s time for both Trump and Harris to answer questions about their strategies for putting U.S. trade policy back on the offensive.

To be clear, there’s little daylight between Trump and Harris on tariffs. In July, CNBC ran a headline warning if Trump wins, the U.S. “could go ‘nuclear’ on China trade,” whereas Harris would “remain tough.”

There’s no doubt that Trump’s proposed 10 percent across-the-board tariff and “matching tax,” along with a 60 percent tariff on Chinese imports, would harm the U.S. economy. But going by the last four years, it seems unlikely that Harris would use tariffs any more selectively.

The Biden administration left in place all of Trump’s China tariffs and slapped new ones on “green” products. Adding sprinkles to a cupcake doesn’t make the desert less fattening.

Turning to the offense, both tickets are also skeptical of “traditional” trade agreements. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, tried his hand at product-specific (and therefore unambitious) bilateral deals with countries like China and Japan and replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement with the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement .

These deals provide a clearer picture of Trump’s philosophy of trade deals. Rather than focus on permanently eliminating trade barriers, Trump got minor commitments from China to buy set amounts of beef and pork, for example, by threatening to resume tariff hostilities with them.

As for the new North American agreement, Trump’s commitment to it will be put to the test when it’s reviewed in 2026. In the leadup to this review, expect a heavy focus on enforcement and compliance.

Harris, meanwhile, voted against US-Mexico-Canada, opposed NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and presumably liked the Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework , which lacks commitments on market access and intellectual property.

These positions contradict her 2019 statement , “I’m not a protectionist Democrat.” In explaining her opposition to Trump’s deal with Mexico and Canada, Harris said it fell short in its provisions on climate change. If Harris believes that a trade deal should be a close substitute for an environmental agreement, she’ll never support any trade deal.

Then there’s the question of enforcing U.S. exporter rights abroad. Trump has the advantage over Harris on this score.

Despite his administration’s antipathy toward the institution, Trump filed cases against Canada, China, India, Mexico and Turkey at the World Trade Organization. The Biden administration hasn’t brought a single World Trade Organization complaint and has stepped back from trade enforcement more broadly, except for a narrow set of North American labor-related disputes .

Trump also rightly ignored requests by India and South Africa to eliminate global intellectual property protections for medical products, whereas Biden happily obliged these countries’ industrial policy goals by agreeing to the so-called “TRIPS waiver.”

Likewise, the Trump administration called out foreign countries’ trade barriers in the annual National Trade Estimates Report and used Special 301 reports to “name and shame” those turning a blind eye to the theft of American intellectual properties.

The Biden administration has gutted both documents. The 2024 Special 301 Report , for example, failed to flag abuses of compulsory licensing, softened language on the importance of voluntary licensing and even deleted a longstanding paragraph on why protecting intellectual property matters for the U.S. economy more generally.

Finally, the Trump administration penned proposals for the World Trade Organization’s Joint Statement Initiative on E-Commerce , including prohibiting discriminatory restrictions on data, digital goods and services supplied by U.S. companies. The Biden administration withdrew support for these proposals even though the U.S. has a massive trade surplus in these products and related services.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) led this retreat on digital trade, claiming that WTO obligations would limit the amount of “policy space” in which to regulate Big Tech. This concern is misguided, but if Harris buys it, her administration would be unlikely to reassert U.S. leadership in digital trade.

There are two reasons Trump and Harris should be motivated to articulate a vision for going on the offense.

First, the electorate doesn’t support the tariff frenzy. A new poll by the Cato Institute finds that 75 percent of Americans are concerned about the cost of tariffs, and 66 percent would oppose a job-saving tariff if it added $10 to the price of a pair of jeans, for example. These findings won’t change either candidate’s swing-state strategies, but they will matter in terms of governing.

Second, Congress rightly wants to claw back its trade authority. There is bipartisan support for traditional trade agreements, robust intellectual property protection and U.S. leadership on digital trade , especially to strengthen supply chains with trusted partners as a counterweight to China. The candidates are misreading the room.

U.S. trade policy has been rudderless for eight years. Markets, as well as the electorate, have already weighed both candidates’ tariff mythologies. It’s time for Trump and Harris to come clean on their plans for taking U.S. trade policy back on the offense.

Marc L. Busch is the Karl F. Landegger Professor of International Business Diplomacy at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University and a global fellow at the Wilson Center’s Wahba Institute for Strategic Competition .

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