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Bill Weld on Free TradeLibertarian Party nominee for Vice Pres.; former GOP MA Governor; 2020 GOP Presidential Challenger |
Bill Weld: Oh I absolutely would rejoin, would join TPP in a heartbeat. I point out that during the campaign candidate Trump said no we can't join the Trans-Pacific Partnership because it would be dominated by China. He's so incurious and so ignorant about foreign affairs that he didn't know that China is not a member of TPP. The whole idea was that we would have a consortium of 12 Pacific Navy facing nations some in Asia some in the Americas without China at the table. So it would be our beachhead in Asia. I think the relationship with China. Has to be a complex one. We're the two biggest players out there. Xi Jinping I had high hopes for when he came, in but he really has resubsidized all those SOEs, the state owned enterprises, and we're getting our brains beat in around the world and on intellectual property they are complete scofflaws. So you've got to be tough and I think we'll probably return to this.
WELD: In the purest sense, free trade is always going to benefit the United States compared to other countries because we have the highest rate of productivity and we're the most technologically advanced country in the world. So we're always going to have that edge. And free trade is going to produce high wage jobs in the United States. You know, it's an imperative to get the wage level up in this country. And that's one of the things that's going to do it. You may lose at the margin some low-wage jobs. But free trade over the long haul, even the intermediate haul, is going to increase the wage level in the United States. And the notion that Mr. Trump has of "let's impose these huge unilateral tariffs," we tried that with the Smoot-Hawley tariff in the 1920s and it croaked the world economy.
Libertarians may have to get used to Weld's wry humor. For his part, the former Massachusetts governor says he's now committed to the Libertarian cause. "Well, I read the platform yesterday, so now I know all the issues," Weld told me. "It's actually a pretty good platform."