Heidi Cruz Argues Forcefully For Trade Authority, Something Her Husband Opposes

Heidi Cruz misstated her husband's vote on a key and controversial trade provision last year in a radio interview this week.

The issue of trade has become a hot one for both parties this cycle. Donald Trump's made the case that the United States is getting screwed on free trade -- that U.S. policies have ruined the wages for the American worker.

In a radio interview on South Carolina's Vince Coakley Radio Program, Heidi Cruz argued free trade is a powerfully good force and that presidents should have increased powers to negotiate trade deals -- a policy that has become particularly controversial over the last year as President Obama has pushed for what's called trade-promotion authority (TPA) to negotiate a U.S.-Asian Pacific trade agreement.

And then she said Ted Cruz voted for TPA. Sen. Cruz, while initially voting for TPA in May of 2015, was one of only five Republicans to vote against it when it came up for another vote in the Senate later that June. At the time, Cruz explained that his reversal was a result of his opposition to the Export-Import Bank and new immigration provisions introduced by the House.

A Cruz spokesman told BuzzFeed News: "Cruz supports free trade but voted against TPA because he did not want President Obama to have the authority to unilaterally make bad trade deals."

"Well Ted is a free trader, he's always been a free trader, and that is why he voted for the Trade Promotion Authority in Congress. That being said, what is--and the reason he is for free trade is because it creates American jobs. We've done a study on the campaign as to how many jobs free trade has created for various states in the country, and the numbers are in the hundreds of thousands depending on the size of the state. And so I'd encourage your listeners to look at those types of statistics. Free trade creates jobs for Americans. Ted has integrated into his tax plan a tax break for exports so that companies that producing for export will not be taxed in the U.S. which gives them any advantage in selling abroad.

"The second thing, though, and equally important, they must go part and parcel, is that we must be negotiating the right free trade agreements that are good for America and not bad for America. And this president has not proven that he's able to do so, and so Ted voted against the TPP, the deal with Asia. And the reason he voted against it is, he actually goes and reads the bills that he votes on and the agreements that are negotiated. Ted went down into the SCIF, he read through the pages of this agreement. He made the observation that this was not a good agreement for America. This president is not negotiating good deals for our country, there are immigration things in there. There are things that don't belong in there, and he voted against that agreement.

"Let me remind you listeners that the trade promotion authority for the bill that gives Congress the right to give to executive branch the ability to negotiate trade on the behalf of the country. This is a six year lasting situation, so in the Constitution the authority for trade is given to the Congress, but because of all the different interests, it was deemed a long time ago that the executive should argue on behalf of the American people, but that Congress should approve or disapprove. And this lasts for six years, and so if we deny the ability for our executive to negotiate trade agreements on our behalf, and then be reviewed by Congress --which should be a very assiduous process -- we will be also denying the next president because this president only has just about eight months left in office."

Consider that the (Reagan) administration has done the following:

— Forced Japan to accept restraints on auto exports. The agreement set total Japanese auto exports at 1.68 million vehicles in 1981-82, 8 percent below 1980 exports. Two years later the level was permitted to rise to 1.85 million.(33) Clifford Winston of the Brookings Institution found that the import limits have actually cost jobs in the U.S. auto industry by making it possible for the sheltered American automakers to raise prices and limit production. In 1984, Winston writes in Blind Intersection? Policy and the Automobile Industry, 32,000 jobs were lost, U.S. production fell by 300,000 units, and profits for U.S. firms increased $8.9 billion. The quotas have also made the Japanese firms potentially more formidable rivals because they have begun building assembly plants in the United States.(34) They also shifted production to larger cars, introducing to American firms competition they did not have before the quotas were created. In 1984, it was estimated that higher prices for domestic and imported cars cost consumers $2.2 billion a year.(35) At the height of the dollar’s exchange rate with the yen in 1984-85, the quotas were costing American consumers the equivalent of $11 billion a year.(36)

— Tightened up considerably the quotas on imported sugar. Imports fell from an annual average of 4.85 million tons in 1979-81 to an annual average of 2.86 million tons in 1982-86. Not only did this continued practice force Americans to spend more than other consumers for sugar, but it created hardships for Latin American countries and the Philippines, which depend on sugar exports for economic development. The quota program undermined President Reagan’s Caribbean Basin Initiative and intensified the international debt crisis.(37)

— Negotiated to increase restrictiveness of the Multifiber Arrangement and extended restrictions to previously unrestricted textiles. The administration unilaterally changed the rule of origin in order to restrict textile and apparel imports further and imposed a special ceiling on textiles from the People’s Republic of China.(38) Finally, it pressured Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea, the largest exporters of textiles and apparel to the United States, into highly restrictive bilateral agreements. All told, textile and apparel restrictions cost Americans more than $20 billion a year.(39) The Reagan administration has stated several times that textile and apparel imports should grow no faster than the domestic market.(40)

— Required 18 countries—including Brazil, Spain, South Korea, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, Finland, and Australia, as well as the European Community—to accept “voluntary restraint agreements” to reduce steel imports, guaranteeing domestic producers a share of the American market. When 3 countries not included in the 18—Canada, Sweden, and Taiwan— increased steel exports to the United States, the administration demanded talks to check the increase. The administration also imposed tariffs and quotas on specialty steel. These policies, with their resulting shortages, have severely squeezed American steel-using firms, making them less competitive in world markets and eliminating more than 52,000 jobs.(41)

— Imposed a five-year duty, beginning at 45 percent, on Japanese motorcycles for the benefit of Harley Davidson, which admitted that superior Japanese management was the cause of its problems.(42)

— Raised tariffs on Canadian lumber and cedar shingles.

— Forced the Japanese into an agreement to control the price of computer memory-chip exports and increase Japanese purchases of American-made chips. When the agreement was allegedly broken, the administration imposed a 100 percent tariff on $300 million worth of electronics goods. This episode teaches a classic lesson in how protectionism comes back to haunt a country’s producers. The quotas established as a result of the agreement have created a severe shortage of memory chips and higher prices for American computer makers, putting them at a disadvantage with foreign competitors. Only two American firms are still making these chips, accounting for a small percentage of the world market.(43)

— Removed Third World countries from the duty-free import program for developing nations on several occasions.

— Pressed Japan to force its automakers to buy more American-made parts.(44)

— Demanded that Taiwan, West Germany, Japan, and Switzerland restrain their exports of machine tools, with some market shares rolled back to 1981 levels. Other countries were warned not to increase their shares of the U.S. market.

— Accused the Japanese of dumping roller bearings, because the price did not rise to cover a fall in the value of the yen. The U.S. Customs Service was ordered to collect duties equal to the so-called dumping margins.(45)

— Accused the Japanese of dumping forklift trucks and color picture tubes.(46)

— Failed to ask Congress to end the ban on the export of Alaskan oil and of timber cut from federal lands, a measure that could substantially increase U.S. exports to Japan.

— Redefined “dumping” in order “to make it easier to bring charges of unfair trade practices against certain competitors.”(47)

— Beefed up the Export-Import Bank, an institution dedicated to promoting the exports of a handful of large companies at the expense of everyone else.(48)

— Extended quotas on imported clothespins.

Cruz, Rubio, Trump...what they said about Trade & Guns in announcement speech.
http://towncriernews.blogspot.com/2016/02/this-week-we-have-examined-presidential.html

This week we have examined the presidential campaign announcement speeches of Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Donald Trump.
We have looked at their comments on immigration and Terrorism, Islam here.

Today we look at what their concerns with the 2nd amendment/right to bear arms in their important first campaign speeches. Following that is Trade.

2nd Amendment, Guns, Right to bear arms

Cruz Mar. 23, 2015

Instead of a government that works to undermine our Second Amendment rights, that seeks to ban our ammunition..... imagine a federal government that protects the right to keep and bear arms of all law-abiding Americans.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/transcript-ted-cruzs-speech-at-liberty-university/2015/03/23/41c4011a-d168-11e4-a62f-ee745911a4ff_story.html

Marco Rubio April 13, 2015
ZERO

http://time.com/3820475/transcript-read-full-text-of-sen-marco-rubios-campaign-launch/

Trump June 16 , 2015

Fully support and back up the Second Amendment.
(APPLAUSE)
Now, it’s very interesting. Today I heard it. Through stupidity, in a very, very hard core prison, interestingly named Clinton, two vicious murderers, two vicious people escaped, and nobody knows where they are. And a woman was on television this morning, and she said, “You know, Mr. Trump,” and she was telling other people, and I actually called her, and she said, “You know, Mr. Trump, I always was against guns. I didn’t want guns. And now since this happened” — it’s up in the prison area — “my husband and I are finally in agreement, because he wanted the guns. We now have a gun on every table. We’re ready to start shooting.”
I said, “Very interesting.”

So protect the Second Amendment.

TRADE
Cruz
Imagine instead of economic stagnation, booming economic growth.
(Not specifically ‘trade’, but as close as he got to it!)

Rubio

They are busy looking backward, so they do not see how jobs and prosperity today depend on our ability to compete in a global economy.

Trump

When was the last time anybody saw us beating, let’s say, China in a trade deal? They kill us. I beat China all the time. All the time.

When did we beat Japan at anything? They send their cars over by the millions, and what do we do? When was the last time you saw a Chevrolet in Tokyo? It doesn’t exist, folks. They beat us all the time.
When do we beat Mexico at the border? They’re laughing at us, at our stupidity. And now they are beating us economically. They are not our friend, believe me. But they’re killing us economically.
The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems.

TRUMP: Last quarter, it was just announced our gross domestic product — a sign of strength, right? But not for us. It was below zero. Whoever heard of this? It’s never below zero.

‘ll bring back our jobs from China, from Mexico, from Japan, from so many places. I’ll bring back our jobs, and I’ll bring back our money.
Right now, think of this: We owe China $1.3 trillion. We owe Japan more than that. So they come in, they take our jobs, they take our money, and then they loan us back the money, and we pay them in interest, and then the dollar goes up so their deal’s even better.
How stupid are our leaders? How stupid are these politicians to allow this to happen? How stupid are they?
. I’m going to tell you a couple of stories about trade, because I’m totally against the trade bill for a number of reasons.
Number one, the people negotiating don’t have a clue. Our president doesn’t have a clue. He’s a bad negotiator.

TRUMP: So we need people — I’m a free trader. But the problem with free trade is you need really talented people to negotiate for you. If you don’t have talented people, if you don’t have great leadership, if you don’t have people that know business, not just a political hack that got the job because he made a contribution to a campaign, which is the way all jobs, just about, are gotten, free trade terrible.
Free trade can be wonderful if you have smart people, but we have people that are stupid. We have people that aren’t smart. And we have people that are controlled by special interests. And it’s just not going to work.
So, here’s a couple of stories happened recently. A friend of mine is a great manufacturer. And, you know, China comes over and they dump all their stuff, and I buy it. I buy it, because, frankly, I have an obligation to buy it, because they devalue their currency so brilliantly, they just did it recently, and nobody thought they could do it again.
But with all our problems with Russia, with all our problems with everything — everything, they got away with it again. And it’s impossible for our people here to compete.
So I want to tell you this story. A friend of mine who’s a great manufacturer, calls me up a few weeks ago. He’s very upset. I said, “What’s your problem?”
He said, “You know, I make great product.”
And I said, “I know. I know that because I buy the product.”
He said, “I can’t get it into China. They won’t accept it. I sent a boat over and they actually sent it back. They talked about environmental, they talked about all sorts of crap that had nothing to do with it.”
I said, “Oh, wait a minute, that’s terrible. Does anyone know this?”
He said, “Yeah, they do it all the time with other people.”
I said, “They send it back?”
“Yeah. So I finally got it over there and they charged me a big tariff. They’re not supposed to be doing that. I told them.”
Now, they do charge you tariff on trucks, when we send trucks and other things over there.
Ask Boeing. They wanted Boeing’s secrets. They wanted their patents and all their secrets before they agreed to buy planes from Boeing.
Hey, I’m not saying they’re stupid. I like China. I sell apartments for — I just sold an apartment for $15 million to somebody from China. Am I supposed to dislike them? I own a big chunk of the Bank of America Building at 1290 Avenue of the Americas, that I got from China in a war. Very valuable.
I love China. The biggest bank in the world is from China. You know where their United States headquarters is located? In this building, in Trump Tower. I love China. People say, “Oh, you don’t like China?”
No, I love them. But their leaders are much smarter than our leaders, and we can’t sustain ourself with that. There’s too much — it’s like — it’s like take the New England Patriots and Tom Brady and have them play your high school football team. That’s the difference between China’s leaders and our leaders.
They are ripping us. We are rebuilding China. We’re rebuilding many countries. China, you go there now, roads, bridges, schools, you never saw anything like it. They have bridges that make the George Washington Bridge look like small potatoes. And they’re all over the place.
We have all the cards, but we don’t know how to use them. We don’t even know that we have the cards, because our leaders don’t understand the game. We could turn off that spigot by charging them tax until they behave properly.
So Mexico takes a company, a car company that was going to build in Tennessee, rips it out. Everybody thought the deal was dead. Reported it in the Wall Street Journal recently. Everybody thought it was a done deal. It’s going in and that’s going to be it, going into Tennessee. Great state, great people.

TRUMP: All of a sudden, at the last moment, this big car manufacturer, foreign, announces they’re not going to Tennessee. They’re gonna spend their $1 billion in Mexico instead. Not good.
Now, Ford announces a few weeks ago that Ford is going to build a $2.5 billion car and truck and parts manufacturing plant in Mexico. $2.5 billion, it’s going to be one of the largest in the world. Ford. Good company.
So I announced that I’m running for president. I would...
(APPLAUSE)
... one of the early things I would do, probably before I even got in — and I wouldn’t even use — you know, I have — I know the smartest negotiators in the world. I know the good ones. I know the bad ones. I know the overrated ones.
Let me give you the bad news. Every car and every truck and every part manufactured in this plant that comes across the border, we’re going to charge you a 35-percent tax, and that tax is going to be paid simultaneously with the transaction, and that’s it.
Now, here’s what is going to happen. If it’s not me in the position, it’s one of these politicians that we’re running against, you know, the 400 people that we’re (inaudible). And here’s what’s going to happen. They’re not so stupid. They know it’s not a good thing, and they may even be upset by it. But then they’re going to get a call from the donors or probably from the lobbyist for Ford and say, “You can’t do that to Ford, because Ford takes care of me and I take care of you, and you can’t do that to Ford.”
And guess what? No problem. They’re going to build in Mexico. They’re going to take away thousands of jobs. It’s very bad for us.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Trackback comments on Immigration: http://towncriernews.blogspot.com/2016/02/what-candidates-said-about-immigration.html

Trackback comments on Terrorism, Islam, refugees, Middle East: http://towncriernews.blogspot.com/2016/02/what-issues-really-matter-to-candidates.html

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.