The GOP betrays its principles for the sake of political expediency.

The president should stop worrying about the trade deficit and learn to love free trade.

"We're putting the trade war on hold," Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin announced on Sunday. "It's about structural changes. It's about lowering tariffs. China has committed to lower tariffs on many things and made structural changes to protect our technology."

Gary D. Cohn is a Democrat, but his resignation as director of the White House National Economic Council on Tuesday actually underscored the fundamental divide between President Trump and his fellow Republicans as the president seeks to raise barriers to foreign trade.

Free trade benefits every country — including, of course, our own.

The state has become the leading exporter in the U.S. since the passage of NAFTA in 1993.

A sweeping Pacific trade pact meant to bind the U.S.and Asia effectively died Friday, as Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress told the White House they won’t advance it in the election’s aftermath, and Obama administration officials acknowledged it has no way forward now.

International trade figures heavily in the presidential race. Presidential candidate Donald Trump said, "Hillary Clinton unleashed a trade war against the American worker when she supported one terrible trade deal after another - from NAFTA to China to South Korea." And adding, "A Trump Administration will end that war by getting a fair deal for the American people.

The one clear casualty of the presidential race is free trade.

Amid all the other ideological fights between Democrats and Republicans, a consensus has emerged in exit polling that voters see free trade as an economic drag on the U.S., costing American jobs.