President Trump’s pro-growth economic agenda of middle-class tax cuts and deregulation has successfully pulled the U.S. economy out of its post-recession slump. And now his revolutionary trade policies are paving the way toward an even more prosperous future for Pennsylvania and the rest of the country.
As a proud Pennsylvania native, I know from experience that trade deals can make or break our state’s economy. For decades, we’ve been stuck with trade agreements that failed to serve the interests of our workers and plundered Pennsylvania’s prosperity. Luckily, this trend is changing.
America’s first major trade policy victory came early in Donald Trump’s presidency, when he successfully renegotiated our trade agreement with South Korea. As a result of this agreement, South Korea committed to double its annual U.S. auto imports to 50,000 cars per manufacturer and eliminate nontariff trade barriers, giving American workers a chance to compete on a more level playing field. South Korea also agreed to limit its steel exports to the U.S., providing welcome relief to Pennsylvania’s formerly beleaguered steel industry.
Trade deals such as the one with South Korea are vital for Pennsylvania’s manufacturing sector, which produced $94 billion of economic output in 2018, accounting for approximately 12% of our state’s economy. We export about one-third of that total, and those sales support more than 150,000 jobs. So expanding our access to overseas markets is crucial to our economic growth.
A trade deal with South Korea was only the beginning.
In October 2019, the president signed a breakthrough trade deal with Japan that vastly expanded market access for U.S. farmers, with Trump calling it “a huge victory for America’s farmers, ranchers, and growers.” He was right. Japan agreed to eliminate or reduce tariffs on more than $7.2 billion in U.S. agricultural exports, including beef, pork, and wheat — a major win for Pennsylvania’s booming agriculture industry, which generates billions of dollars for the state economy.
The agreement with Japan came at an opportune time, providing a catalyst for the subsequent Phase One trade deal with China, under which Beijing committed to purchasing an additional $200 billion in U.S. goods and services over the next two years. The Chinese government had been trying to avoid having to make such concessions by restricting imports of American agricultural products. But the Japan deal rendered that strategy moot by giving farmers and ranchers in states such as Pennsylvania an alternative market for their products.
In the same week that the Phase One agreement was finalized, President Trump signed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a transformative deal that replaces NAFTA’s job-killing provisions with new terms that treat American workers and businesses fairly. The USMCA is projected to add $68.2 billion to the U.S. economy and create a whopping 176,000 new jobs by eliminating outdated rules that gave artificial advantages to competitors in Canada and Mexico. Pennsylvania exports a whopping $15 billion to Mexico and Canada every year, and stands to significantly benefit from the new trilateral trade agreement.
Despite this lengthy track record of success, Democrats continue to spread misinformation in an effort to undermine popular support for his trade agenda. Their favorite line of attack is to fixate on the “costs” associated with the strategic counter-tariffs the president used to secure concessions from trade abusers such as China, while ignoring the far more substantial benefits that come from making our trade relations more equitable.
Just recently, though, Beijing announced that it is cutting tariffs on $75 billion of American-made products as part of the new trade deal with the U.S. More importantly, temporary counter-tariffs convinced China to end some of its most egregious trade abuses, putting Pennsylvania workers and businesses on a permanently stronger footing.
Liberals are trying to distort Donald Trump’s clear record of success on trade by citing a report that relies on inflated cost assumptions and fails to account for the benefits of the two most significant trade deals of his presidency. But they won’t succeed, because numbers don’t lie.
The U.S. economy is stronger than ever thanks to the president’s trade deals — and Pennsylvania workers won’t forget what Donald Trump has done for our country and our state when they cast their ballots in November.