End mission creep in trade policy
What the document says“The next Administration needs to end the mission creep that has all but taken over trade policy in recent years.”
The essay argues that trade policy has limited capabilities and is vulnerable to mission creep and regulatory capture, that progressive attempts to use it for climate and equity goals will fail because it is the wrong tool, and that conservatives should be equally skeptical of attempts on the right to use it to punish opponents or remake manufacturing. It adds that a cardinal rule is not to give yourself powers you would not want your opponents to have.
What the document actually says“The next Administration needs to end the mission creep that has all but taken over trade policy in recent years.”
Trade policy has been asked to do too much. The next team should stop that.
Trade rules are being used for other goals. Some want them used for the climate. Others want them used to punish rivals. This essay says that does not work.
This chapter contains the opposing case. 'The Case for Fair Trade', by Peter Navarro, argues the reverse: that trade deficits are a national security problem, that reciprocal tariffs should be used as leverage, and that economic security is national security. Neither essay is presented as the chapter's conclusion.
Read against the documents indexed here on August 26, 2026, and nothing was found that answers this. Nothing indexed comes close. No candidate concerns the scope of trade policy. The nearest instrument, Executive Order 14148 of January 20, 2025, revokes a long list of prior executive orders, but a search of its text finds no mention of trade, tariffs, imports or exports, so it does not narrow trade policy to trade. That is a record of a search, not a finding that nothing has happened: an act this site does not hold, or one that answers the proposal in words unlike its own, would not be caught by it.