This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, October 24, 2012.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Getting tough on China and an attack on outsourcing has supplanted free trade

in the campaign rhetoric of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

And yet these candidates both seem to want to look like free traders.

Simon Lester, a trade policy analyst at the Cato Institute, comments on the rhetoric and

reality of two candidates on trade.

As you noted before we began talking here, at the very least, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama know that it is important to be perceived as free traders and they like that they like using that term.

That's absolutely right and I think they both feel the need to tell the business world that they are

free traders and they will push for free trade agreements around the world to some extent,

at least in theory. When you get into the details it gets a little

more complicated what exactly is in these trade agreements with whom should

we pursue trade agreements and we can see what Barack Obama's doing.

He's focused on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is a free trade agreement, a proposed

free trade agreement with 10 other nations around the Pacific Rim.

Mitt Romney criticizes that as not enough and he would like to champion free trade even further,

but he hasn't been very specific about with whom he would pursue free trade beyond that.

Now the Trans-Pacific Partnership is dealing with countries with whom we already have agreements, yes?

Many of those we already have trade agreements with Canada, Mexico, Australia.

So it would only add a few smaller countries.

Vietnam, I guess, would be one big addition.

But for the most part, it's an updated version

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