CLEVELAND — Donald Trump's defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016 was a dark day for Democrats, former Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown among them. In a conversation with News 5 at the time, he recalled how he felt the day after that election.
"It was my birthday," he said, "not my happiest." But it came with one small silver lining for Brown. "I am comfortable that TPP is dead."
TPP, the Trans Pacific Partnership, a trade deal supported by former President Obama but opposed by Brown and also President-elect Donald Trump, who pulled out of the deal on his first day in office in 2017. They both were also opposed to NAFTA, which Brown voted against in 1993. That's why Brown reached out to Trump in November of 2016 to say, "Let's work together on this."
"I don't think the president-elect's really thought about these issues with any depth. He knows he doesn't like trade agreements, but it's obviously more complicated than that," Brown said at the time.
Brown worked with the Trump Administration to pass the NAFTA replacement, USMCA, in 2020.
"I've supported tariffs to help steel in Ohio, to help washing machines in Ohio. I've seen tariffs can work if they're well thought through," Brown told News 5 this week. "I've seen tariffs can work if they're well thought through, they're aimed at countries that cheat. You don't need tariffs on Canada, you don't need tariffs on France or Germany," he said. "You go after countries that cheat."
"If done right, not the sort of scatter-brained, haphazard way of doing it one day and changing your mind three days later, that doesn't work," he said.
Brown voiced his concerns recently in an op-ed for the New York Times against what he calls the president's erratic approach to tariffs and the Democrats' response that finds many of them, he said, siding with Wall Street interests that brought us NAFTA and TPP.
"There is more than just the choice of reckless tariffs or the choice of neo-liberal kind of trade policy," he said.
That he argues is building a trade policy that gives the workers impacted a seat at the table and a say in the process.
"Where you first listen to workers and you act accordingly. You don't come up with a policy and then sell it to the workers," he said. "People want a dramatic change in the economy, but they want it with workers at the table and with government actually listening to those workers, not some think-tank in Washington or not some economist on Wall Street that say here's what we need to do to build our economy."
Something that's the focus of Brown's newly formed Dignity of Work Institute.
"One of the things that really struck us in the early research with our Dignity of Work Institute is that most people don't think that the economy should be measured by unemployment rate and inflation rate only. If you have two jobs and everybody's working and the unemployment rate's low, that's not really good for you that you have to have a second job," Brown said.
Brown remains the most recognizable Ohio Democrat and would be seen as a formidable candidate for either governor or Senate next year.
"My future for sure is setting up and running this institute," he said. "I don't know if I'll ever run for office again, it's not a priority right now. My wife and I and my family will think about it in the months ahead."
When it was pointed out that this is generally the time statewide hopefuls announce their intentions ahead of the next year's elections, Brown said, "Well campaigns used to be shorter than they are now," he said with a laugh.
"The filing deadline, I imagine, next year is February or March. You will know by then, I'll know by then, but I'm not going to fast-timeline what I do next. I'm grateful that, I believe, 16 or 17 times people in this state have voted for me," he said.
When asked if he would at least be willing to say at this point if he would rule out a run for senator or for governor, Brown replied, "No, I'm not ruling anything out."
