This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, November 8th, 2018.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The much hailed and maligned protectionism emanating from the White House has been bothersome to people who believe in freedom, but is it nearing its end?

Scott Linsicum, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, is author of the new Cato Trade Bulletin,

The Protectionist Moment that Wasn't.

We spoke Tuesday.

Immediately after the approval of the revised NAFTA that has this unpronounceable acronym,

unfortunately for us.

This was Canada, the United States, and Mexico.

Somebody said, look, you can look at this agreement and say that Trump got his victory here, but what I see is very different,

which is this is the outer limit of the protectionism that Donald Trump would like to impose.

What do you think of that?

I mean, I think that's pretty true.

I would argue, though, that his steel and aluminum tariffs and his China tariffs are probably the outer bounds of his protectionism.

But the NAFTA renegotiation really is an excellent example of how there really is no appetite in this country for a real

protectionist America because despite the President's claims I know this is going to surprise you, but they were wildly

oversold that this was a radical change from the previous NAFTA.

The fact is that the fundamental principles of NAFTA being free trade in goods and services

across borders is mostly untouched and in fact in certain things like digital trade is expanded. So, you know, the idea that

NAFTA was the worst thing ever, that free trade is horrible, all of that just simply

is belied by the fact that the new NAFTA, the USMCA, is really the same type of agreement

just with some fiddling around the edges.

...