Sallie James of the Cato Institute reviews the remaining candidates' positions on trade in a new Cato briefing paper: Race to the Bottom? The Presidential Candidates’ Positions on Trade. (April 15, 2008). James draws on records and rhetoric. Bottom line:
...Although trade votes are a necessarily imperfect yardstick with which to measure future policy—packaged as they often are with other, sometimes contradictory, legislation—they seem to be consistent with the campaign pledges of the candidates.
Voters could expect a President McCain to promote freer trade and cuts in market-distorting subsidies, and a President Clinton or a President Obama to view free trade between voluntary actors as something to be restrained, loaded with conditions, or counterbalanced by an expansion of the welfare state.
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