Donald Trump has a strong track record of negotiating foreign trade deals

Renegotiating trade agreements was a key part of Trump’s 2016 election bid, and he has been effective in securing America’s interests abroad. Trump has put America first and has successfully used tariffs as leverage to address trade deficits and taxes on US businesses. In his first term, Trump has replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement, pulled the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and achieved a trade deal with China. Consequently, the US government received $79 billion from trade tariffs, a significant increase on previous years.^[1] The introduction of tariffs has benefitted workers in industries producing the tariffed goods, as competitors face higher costs in the US market as a result - the US steel industry, for example, was a beneficiary, with thousands of jobs created. Trump has also used trade negotiations to achieve other foreign policy objectives. In the replacement of NAFTA, for instance, Trump used the possibility of tariff impositions to push the Mexican government to lower the numbers of asylum seekers crossing the US-Mexico border northwards.^[2] Similarly, the trade deal with China saw Beijing make concessions over intellectual property, financial services and currency, as well as an end to its “pressuring foreign companies to transfer their technology to Chinese companies” as a condition for access to the Chinese market.^[3] The trade deal with China has been called ‘phase one’, with Trump looking to make further gains in a second phase of negotiations that will begin following November’s election, should he win.^[4]