Republicans who support the 13-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership will "really forfeit any chance they've got of winning the industrial states," conservative commentator Pat Buchanan told
Newsmax TV on Tuesday.
"This TPP could go down," Buchanan told "Newsmax Prime" hosts J.D. Hayworth and Miranda Khan. "The reason is the awakening of the American people to what's happening to us because of these trade deals.
"Secondly, today, the news came out that we're running a trade deficit very close to $600 billion this year. They had a $48 billion trade deficit last month. The Chinese trade deficits are running over $360 billion — and you've got [Donald] Trump and Bernie Sanders, who are going to make this an issue if [President] Barack Obama puts it out in the early primaries."
Watch Newsmax TV on DIRECTV Ch. 349, DISH Ch. 223 and Verizon FiOS Ch. 115. Get Newsmax TV on your cable system –
Click Here Now
The TPP, which cleared its last hurdles on Monday, would create the world's largest free-trade area, encompassing 40 percent of the global economy. The final agreement resulted after five days of round-the-clock talks in Atlanta.
GOP lawmakers, however, are likely to support it, Buchanan said, out of loyalty to its core constituents: corporations and business people.
"They're 100 percent behind these trade deals, because it frees up these corporations to move their factories abroad, their plants abroad, and send their goods back to the United States free of charge," he said. "The de-industrialization of America is to the benefit of these corporations, because they can produce far more cheaply outside the United States than they can here."
Buchanan, who served in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations, is the author of
"The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose from Defeat to Create the New Majority."
On another foreign policy issue, Buchanan said that he agreed with front-runner Trump that the United States needed to stay out of Syria.
"Mr. Trump is making more sense than any other Republican on foreign policy in saying that we ought to stay out of Syria, [out of] involvement in that civil war."
If President Bashar al-Assad is toppled, the Islamic State most likely will take over, he said.
"They would have the capital of Syria and control an entire country," Buchanan said.
"Why then are we helping rebels to bring down Assad?"
There's also Russian President Vladimir Putin's interests in the country.
"He's trying to save Assad and his regime, because he's got a base and always had one on the Mediterranean in Syria," Buchanan said. "I understand even what the Iranians are doing, because if Assad falls, it's a huge defeat for the Shiites, it's a defeat for Hezbollah.
"But what are the Americans doing trying to bring down Assad, when as I say the result of that would be the rise to power of ISIS in Damascus — and you would have demands for the American Army to go in and take them out?"
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.