Both Biden and Harris have aligned with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party on trade and took similar positions when they ran against each other during the 2020 primary. But some of Biden’s positions have departed from stances he took as Barack Obama’s vice president.
As a Senate candidate in 2016, Harris opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiated by the Obama administration, amid criticisms from labor and environmental groups that it would move jobs to lower-income countries like Vietnam. The trade deal never came to a vote in Congress, and Trump withdrew from the pact shortly after becoming president.
Biden, meanwhile, was a vocal supporter of the TPP as vice president. But during the 2020 presidential campaign, he said he “would not rejoin the TPP as it was initially put forward” — instead, he would renegotiate the pact to give labor and environmental groups more influence over the final details of the agreement.
But Biden has not done that as president. Nor has he negotiated any other new free trade agreements.
Harris voted against the U.S.-Canada-Mexico Agreement, Trump’s replacement for NAFTA, saying it wouldn’t do enough to protect Americans’ jobs and the environment. (It passed the Senate 89-10.) “In a Harris administration,” she said at one point, “there would be no trade deal that would be signed unless it protected American workers and it protected our environment.”
Biden initially opposed the USMCA, but changed his position after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi negotiated changes favored by Democrats.
