WaPo | The Republican establishment began losing its party to
Donald Trump on May 24, 2000, at 5:41 p.m., on the floor of the House of
Representatives.
Urged on by their presidential
standard-bearer, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, and by nearly all of the
business lobbyists who represented the core of the party’s donor class,
three-quarters of House Republicans voted to extend the status of
permanent normal trade relations to China. They were more than enough,
when added to a minority of Democrats, to secure passage of a bill that
would sail through the Senate and be signed into law by President Bill
Clinton.
The legislation, a top Republican priority,
held the promise of greater economic prosperity for Americans. But few
could predict that it would cause a series of economic and political
earthquakes that has helped put the GOP in the difficult spot it is in
today: with the most anti-trade Republican candidate in modern history,
Trump, moving closer to clinching the party’s nomination.
“I
try not to regret things,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a Trump
supporter who was one of 83 senators to vote for the China bill. “That’s
one I regret.”
“The Republican electorate√ has gone along with their leaders, begrudgingly, for 20 or 30 years,” Sessions said. “I supported all these trade agreements . . . but it’s becoming clear that the promises that were made weren’t true.”
The
2000 vote effectively unleashed a flood of outsourcing to China, which
in turn exported trillions of dollars of cheap goods back to the United
States. Over the next 10 years, economists have concluded, the expanded
trade with China cost the United States at least 2 million jobs. It was
the strongest force in an overall manufacturing decline that cost
5 milion jobs. Those workers were typically men whose education stopped
after high school, a group that has seen its wages fall by 15 percent
after adjusting for inflation.
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