Huckabee: Trade Stance Costs Me
Posted By Brendan Kirby On October 8, 2015 @ 1:38 PM

Trailing GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said Thursday that he has lost campaign donations because of his opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement and other global pacts.

The former Arkansas governor said big money is what’s driving Republicans to support accords like the TPP. Striking a populist note, he decried the influence of the “the donor class” that backs such deals, adding that his stance on trade creates a “huge challenge” in raising money to run a nationwide campaign for president.

“I’ve had people specifically say, ‘I’m not going to support you because I want someone who will go out there and support these trade deals,’” Huckabee said Thursday on “The Laura Ingraham Show. “So I not only get that, but I also get millions of dollars spent against me by super PACs funded by these same donor class, investor class folks.”

Real-world experience, Huckabee said, shows that free trade is a failure.

“Shame on us if we get fooled again by these trade agreements that are supposed to bring all these jobs and prosperity,” he said. “The truth is, Laura, it makes a few people in the investor class very, very rich, but is comes at the expense of a lot of American workers who lose their jobs.”

Huckabee said the country has lost 5 million manufacturing jobs and 60,000 manufacturing plants since 2000. Since 1990, he added, the country has imported $11 trillion more in goods and services than it has exported.

“And that’s after all these magnificent trade deals that are supposed to bring great prosperity,” he said.

GOP Hopefuls Split on Trade Deal
Posted By Andrea Billups On October 9, 2015 @ 4:37 AM
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is the type of thing that rolls through Congress with overwhelming Republican support.

But for GOP presidential candidates facing a populist conservative base suspicious of the agreement, supporting trade bills is a risky thing, and several of the major candidates oppose it.

The TPP is a big deal. It covers 800 million people and accounts for 40 percent of gross domestic product around the world. Pew Research noted in a June survey that only 43 percent of Republicans called it “a good thing.”

No doubt the deal is even less popular among the GOP conservative base, which is concerned about the effects of trade deals on U.S. workers and the potential loss of U.S. sovereignty to rules crafted by the negotiators. They question the secrecy surrounding the talks and its broad provisions covering everything from intellectual property to drug prices.

But there could be a political cost, because the base makes its way to the polls on primary day. While many big donors like the deal, candidates who back it can have problems with certain contributors. Labor unions and the manufacturing sector generally are against it. A possible opponent list could include automakers, drug manufacturers, tobacco companies, as well as agriculture concerns.

Here are where the top GOP presidential candidates stand on the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal.