Bernie Sanders should be applauding President Trump’s trade program.
After all, in 2008, the Independent from Vermont passionately addressed his colleagues in the senate, railing about the damage being done to our country by “free trade” and calling for tariffs to bring manufacturing jobs back to America. Here’s a clip:
2008 Bernie Sanders claims foreign trade without tariffs will destroy us, maintain that position for sometime, then suddenly when Trump talks about tariffs, he claims they will destroy us.
A repeating pattern emerges if you just look.
pic.twitter.com/ezffZAVZgf— GnosisWolf (@GnosisWolf) July 29, 2025
“What they have said is that we need to not worry about manufacturing in American because what we should establish is a policy of unfettered free trade,” Sanders proclaimed, mocking Republicans. He parodied their enthusiasm for open trade, saying: “We don’t need tariffs, what we need is to allow corporate America freedom, the freedom to throw American workers out on the street. People making $15, $20, $25 bucks an hour, healthcare, pensions…throw them out.”
“Because somehow …we are going to create wealth in America and good paying jobs in America as we shut down plants, [and] we move to China. Corporations there pay workers 20 cents, 30 cents an hour and we bring the products back into this country.”
He lambasted the late Senator John McCain for being a lead advocate for “unfettered free trade” and a champion of a “rightwing ideology” that “it is good for America that corporations can go to China and bring products back into this country.”
For years, Sanders vehemently opposed trade deals that allowed U.S. companies to outsource their manufacturing to countries paying lower wages. He was one of the few, until Donald Trump came along and persuaded Americans that such agreements were hurting the country.
Now, of course, Bernie is critical of Trump’s tariff campaign, as he is of everything the president does.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton had to reverse her long-standing support for trade deals such as NAFTA, crafted by her husband and president Bill Clinton. Trump ran against Clinton, promising in part to redo NAFTA to make it fairer to U.S. workers, which he did.
Accused by Trump (and progressives like Sanders) of undermining U.S. workers, Hillary Clinton came out against the Trans Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement among 12 mostly Pacific Rim countries that had been concocted by the Obama White House. A study of the likely impact of the TPP showed the biggest winner from the deal was Singapore, not the U.S.
Because Trump won in 2016, the U.S. dropped out of the TPP, and the U.S. began a reckoning with the true cost of shipping our jobs overseas. Propelling the loss of millions of jobs was not only bad trade deals but also allowing China to join the World Trade Organization in 2001. The Council on Foreign Relations says the rationale for inviting Beijing’s participation was that, once a member, China would have to “change its policies to adhere to WTO rules, reducing tariffs and guaranteeing intellectual property rights”… That didn’t happen.
In fairness, Bill Clinton joined most policy-makers in thinking that WTO membership would propel China along the road to Democracy and to becoming a valuable partner to the west. Instead, China set about to steal U.S. know-how, allowing it to move up the manufacturing food chain, which they have done.
You can accuse President Trump of many things, but insincerity is not one of them. He has been convinced for decades that our trading partners have taken advantage of the U.S. and that tariffs were needed to stop the flow of jobs going overseas.
His trade and tariff convictions began in the 1980s, when he saw Japanese products begin to flood into the U.S. During that period, Japanese-built cars began to crowd U.S. highways and Komatsu, Fuji Film and other companies became household names.
Trump saw this as a loss for the U.S. In 1987 he told Larry King in an interview, “The fact is, you don’t have free trade. We think of it as free trade, but you right now don’t have free trade…A lot of people are tired of watching the other countries ripping off the United States. This is a great country.”
Fast forward to today, when the president is determined to bring manufacturing home and reverse those decades of job losses. Is it too late? No. The U.S. has, compared to many of our rivals, cheap and copious energy, low taxes and light regulation. We can still compete, and tariffs will help us do that.
What a shame that Bernie Sanders cannot climb aboard.
