It hasn’t received the appropriate amount of publicity, but the fact is that Trump’s trade agenda is already a failure. I say that because his theory was that the US had so much market power, it could dispense with multilateral agreements and impose more favorable bilateral agreements on its partners. The administration has made no–zero–progress on that front. Instead, our partners are making trade deals among themselves, and leaving us out in the cold.
It is clear that the parties to the US-less TPP still want us to join, as we should, when Trump is gone. Will the Democrats rise to the occasion, or will they make the mistake of trying to out-Trump the man himself on trade in an effort to win back the 70,000 votes in the Rust Belt that cost them the election? My hope is that Trump will make protectionism so unpopular, free trade will be back in 2020. Whether that will actually occur or not, I do not know.