(Quin Hillyer, Liberty Headlines) Attorney General Jeff Sessions isn’t the only Republican office holder President Donald Trump has been agitating against – not by a long shot.
One of them, at least by inference, is fighting back, in this case by pushing back against one of the policy positions most closely associated with this president.
Trump is known to be trying to recruit a primary opponent in 2018 for U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, who was reluctant to support Trump’s candidacy last year and who disagrees with Trump on immigration policy. Former state Sen. Kelli Ward, who has aligned herself in support of the president, has already announced a challenge to Flake.
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But rather than shrink from the conflict, Flake is doubling down, without even mentioningTrump by name.
The issue is NAFTA – the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Trump has spent years excoriating the agreement, calling it “the single worst trade deal” the United States has ever made.
While Trump as president has backed away from his “kill NAFTA” stance in favor of calling for substantial renegotiation of its terms, he still quite clearly thinks the current agreement is a horrible deal and still is rhetorically its number-one enemy.
Enter Flake. He is promoting an ongoing initiative called NAFTA4AZ (NAFTA for Arizona) that in effect says Trump is dead wrong about NAFTA’s effects:
“NAFTA plays a critical role in supporting jobs, opportunity, and economic growth,” Flake said on the Senate floor on Tuesday. He added that NAFTA helps support jobs in “a multitude of industries from dairy farmers to call center employees….[For example,] Mignonne Hollis with the Arizona Regional Economic Development Foundation tweeted that ‘NAFTA and our trade partners in Mexico have allowed us to grow the aerospace industry in Southern Arizona, which is key to our economic development.’”….
[The rest of this article is here.]
