Bipartisan U.S. Free Trade Push Likely Gone for Generations, Sánchez Says – National Press Foundation
Written by Black Hot Fire Network on September 24, 2025
The Trump administration’s global tariff strategy has upended the nation’s longstanding, bipartisan commitment to free trade in a move that could reverberate for generations, former U.S. Commerce Trade Undersecretary Francisco Sánchez told the National Press Foundation’s Local Business Journalism Fellowship.
“The idea of promoting free trade as we did for years and years under both Republican and Democratic administrations is probably gone for a long, long time,” Sánchez told 35 journalists gathered in Washington, D.C. “It may well come back, but it’ll probably be when my grandchildren are adults in the workforce. And that’s not just for the United States, by the way. There’s been kind of a trend in countries around the world toward protectionism.”
Absorb higher costs or pass them on
In wide-ranging keynote remarks, Sánchez noted that small businesses were feeling the squeeze of the tariff strategy, forcing many to confront a difficult choice: absorb higher costs or pass them on to consumers.
“In a nutshell, costs are going up, and so the small businesses are either going to have to eat those costs or they’re somehow going to have to persuade their customers to pay more,” Sánchez said, noting the corresponding disruption to global supply chains. “Businesses have developed supply chains over years, and it’s not easy depending on what it is your small business does, if it relies on a number of different components to make their product, it takes a while to get a secure supply chain.”
Immigration enforcement and the shrinking labor pool
The federal government’s aggressive immigration enforcement campaign, meanwhile, also were posing risks to available labor pools to support construction and the nation’s vast service industry.
“I don’t know how they can function,” Sánchez said. “So, I think it makes a lot of sense to go after criminals, and by criminals I mean violent criminals or people that commit robberies, those kinds of things. But our economy has come to rely on this immigrant labor, and until Congress and the president together are willing to come up with a comprehensive immigration reform package doing this comes with big risk.”
‘Who’s going to do the work?’
Trump’s over-arching goal to re-shore a manufacturing base in the U.S., as a way to rebalance the trade deficit faced equally difficult tests with a shortage of a skilled labor force.
“It seems on its face that that’s a worthy the goal, but it has a lot of challenges,” Sánchez said. “Let’s start with the fact that today we have over 500,000 jobs in manufacturing… that cannot be filled.
“Mostly they can’t be filled because of education. These are not our fathers’ or grandfathers’ manufacturing jobs … if we somehow bring hundreds of thousands, if not millions of jobs in, who’s going to do the work?”
Access the full transcript here.
This fellowship is sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as part of a journalism training and award program. NPF is solely responsible for its content.
id=”gtx-trans” style=”position: absolute; left: 251px; top: 1385.5px;”>
class=”gtx-trans-icon”>
