Don't trust Trump on trade: what you need to know about the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

• Author: Rugy, Veronique de
• Position: Column

In a weird blast from the 1930s, the presidential campaign trail this year has become a hotbed of anti-free trade sentiment, with candidates on both sides of the aisle promising to renegotiate or even renege on agreements with key U.S. trading partners like Mexico and Canada.

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In an August speech, GOP nominee Donald Trump went after his Democratic opponent by saying that Hillary Clinton "has supported the trade deals stripping [Detroit], and this country, of its jobs and wealth. She supported Bill Clinton's [North American Free Trade Agreement], she supported China's entrance into the World Trade Organization, she supported the job-killing trade deal with South Korea, and she supports the Trans-Pacific Partnership [TPP]."

Trump hates the TPP. Speaking in June at a campaign rally in St. Clairsville, Ohio, he told the crowd that the not-yet-ratified trade deal "is another disaster done and pushed by special interests who want to rape our country, just a continuing rape of our country."

The former reality TV star claims he isn't "anti-trade." In Detroit he admitted that "trade has big benefits, and I am in favor of trade. But I want great trade deals for our country that create more jobs and higher wages for American workers. Isolation is not an option, only great and well-crafted trade deals are."

There's no doubt that America's trade agreements, including the TPP, could be better. In an ideal world, the U.S. would adopt one and only one such document, which would read: "Americans are allowed to buy whatever they want from wherever they want without any restrictions, quotas, or tariffs, and the U.S. government will not subsidize American exporters in anyway, shape, or form."

Compare and contrast that with the TPP, an agreement that includes 5,500 pages of explicit rules and exemptions and reeks of pro-export mercantilism. In a new book, Blueprint for America, the Hoover Institution economist John H. Cochrane helpfully paraphrased the deal: "We will let your politically connected exporters enjoy some rents of our protected markets," he wrote, "and in return you will let some of our politically connected exporters enjoy some rents in your protected markets." That's more trade, but it's hardly free trade.

Making matters worse, the U.S. likes to use trade agreements to forcibly export some of our worst labor, environmental, and intellectual property laws into foreign countries. For instance, the Mercatus Center's Eli Dourado...