Flake rips Trump on trade in Senate speech, touts US role as world leader

PHOENIX — U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake took to the floor of the U.S. Senate on Thursday to criticize President Donald Trump’s trade policy and trumpet the nation’s role as a world leader.

Flake’s speech came a day after the Arizona Republican joined a bipartisan group of senators in introducing legislation that would require Congress to sign off on Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum imported from Mexico, Canada and the European Union.

Trump fired a pre-emptive strike earlier with a disparaging tweet about Flake, who decided against running for re-election this year and reportedly is considering a primary challenge of the president in 2020.

How could Jeff Flake, who is setting record low polling numbers in Arizona and was therefore humiliatingly forced out of his own Senate seat without even a fight (and who doesn’t have a clue), think about running for office, even a lower one, again? Let’s face it, he’s a Flake!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 7, 2018

“I rise today to sound the alarm about the president’s decision to impose steep tariffs on our trading partners,” Flake said early in the speech, which ran for nearly 17 minutes.

“Make no mistake, we are not — as some administration officials have suggested — in the leisurely early innings of a baseball game, we are in the nascent stages of a full-scale trade war. And, despite the president’s statement that this war will be ‘easily won,’ any student of history knows that, unlike a baseball game where a winner is guaranteed, a trade war only guarantees that there will be losers.”

Flake said the Constitution grants the preeminent role in regulating tariffs and trade to Congress, which should show leadership on issue.

After addressing the tariffs, Flake provided something of a history lesson about nation’s standing as global leader from its beginnings through two World Wars, the Cold War and beyond.

“But this nation’s transformation as an indispensable nation, a necessary nation, was not crafted by military might alone,” he said. “It was our efforts to build up international institutions and norms aimed at fostering democratic ideals and free market principles that truly secured the global leadership that some would now squander.”

The U.S. could have maintained its dominance through military power or economic strength, Flake said, but that wasn’t the path taken.

“Instead, we chose to build the foundations of a global order based on the values we venerate, the beliefs we cherish, the ideas we aspire to,” he said. “A world where leaders must earn the respect of their peers, not through the coercive tactics of bluster and threats, but through the virtue of their actions and the wisdom of their policies.”

Flake called it a “golden thread” leading back to the founding fathers.

“Today that golden thread of continuity is in danger of being snapped,” he said. “Today we appear to be turning our back on this responsibility, a responsibility upheld by previous generations.”

He noted the U.S. leadership in crafting organizations like NATO, the United Nations and trade organizations, “forums for multilateral compromise to take the place of war as a primary arbiter of conflict between nations.”

He lamented the current state of affairs, sharpening his commentary into a criticism of Trump’s seeming affinity for the likes of Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

“Instead, we find ourselves today led by those who express admiration for authoritarianism, in Russia, in China, in the Philippines and other places, who make common cause with bullies, who flirt with tyrants,” he said.

Flake, a frequent critic of Trump’s behavior, didn’t fail to address the president’s use of Twitter.

“Incoherent policy utterances, often as not by tweet, contradicted in the space of single news cycle. Muddled and mercurial, this is not grown-up leadership. Our allies are left baffled, confounded, often appalled,” he said.

“Make no mistake, our allies and those who look to American leadership will not wait for us to come to our senses. If we abandon our role as a leader in the world today, it may very well not be there tomorrow.”

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