Can anyone explain or comprehend the Biden trade agenda? He just walked away from a possibly “foundational” and mutually beneficial Free Trade Agreement FTA that would have benefited both nations – as freedom of exchange always does. These are two of the highest-wage countries in the world, so the standard trope that trade would lower wages carried no weight here. But the AFL-CIO said no and so did Senate Democrats. Biden dutifully complied. A profile in cowardice.

The left pilloried Trump for not being a free trader, and he wasn’t and still isn’t. We think he made a strategic mistake in pulling the U.S. out of the Pacific Trade Agreement. But he did believe in reciprocity and he successfully used U.S. leverage to force other countries – particularly China – to lower their tariffs on American goods and stop stealing intellectual property. And he signed an historic modernization of NAFTA, now called the USMCA. He famously offered the Europeans to go to zero on tariffs if they would. They sprinted away from the table.

But we have in Biden a president who spurns trade deals with our allies and cuts deals that empower our enemies like Iran and China.

The sad irony of this is that Biden and the left obsess about global income inequality but there is no government foreign aid or welfare program that has raised the living standards of the poor more than free trade. And Biden is now officially against it. We favor an economic and humanitarian policy of trade not aid. He favors aid, not trade.