In Iowa today, Mitt Romney announced the trade policy plank of his campaign platform.  While his proposal contains a very brief mention of combating currency manipulation, it focuses primarily on concluding the Doha Round and dramatically increasing the number of free trade agreements that the U.S. signs.

AAM spent time in Iowa recently during our Des Moines Town Hall meeting just a few weeks ago and we talked with a number of voters from both parties.  This helped us to gather a rather frank sense of their views on trade, and it surprises us that the Romney plan doesn’t focus more on enforcing trade laws and holding China accountable for its illegal practices. 

As the Wall Street Journal recently noted, most Republican voters have soured on the trade policies of the past decade.  Iowa alone has lost more than 22,000 manufacturing jobs in the past seven years.  Governor Romney should pay close attention to what people in his own party are saying—that there’s no point in negotiating more trade agreements that don’t work. 

As AAM has suggested in its Town Hall meetings, the U.S. needs a president who is willing to hold our trading partners accountable for their cheating and who will stand up for policies that strengthen U.S. manufacturing.

##

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 1st, 2007 at 11:31 pm and is filed under Manufacturing in the U.S., Enforcing Trade Laws. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.