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The latest installment of NYT’s long-running series on Mahoning County’s love affair with the President focuses in large part on how local politicos—including the recently resigned Democratic leader—think his trade war with China is smart politics. nyti.ms/2VPCyva
The basic premise of @dbetras’s and others’ critique is that Trump is the one guy who wants to “rein in China” and Democrats are opposing him on the merits of that strategic goal.
There’s a tragedy in that perception. Democratic elected officials, from what I’ve seen, are not criticizing Trump for his goal of reining in China but for his ineffectual methods—tariffs which hurt Americans most of all and an allergy to coalition building.
Moreover, in living memory, the Obama administration slogged waist deep in the political mud for the strategic goal of reining in China, advancing a bitterly unpopular transpacific trade deal that pointedly excluded China and included nearly all of its neighbors (TPP).
If you rewind the tape to 2015-2016, you will not find Mahoning voters proudly explaining to reporters that, whatever the local impacts, Obama was “punching China in the face” with TPP. Even the chairman of the local Ds, @dbetras, was against the deal—saying it would cost jobs.
