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Free trade gets an early evening boost in Senate

If the GOP takes Congress, one of the only foreign policy areas where they could work in lockstep with the Obama administration is on the push for free trade. The projected victory of Rob Portman in the Ohio Senate race will increase support for free trade in Congress immediately. Portman, the former congressman and former ...

If the GOP takes Congress, one of the only foreign policy areas where they could work in lockstep with the Obama administration is on the push for free trade.

If the GOP takes Congress, one of the only foreign policy areas where they could work in lockstep with the Obama administration is on the push for free trade.

The projected victory of Rob Portman in the Ohio Senate race will increase support for free trade in Congress immediately. Portman, the former congressman and former director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, is an avid and open free trade supporter. From May 2005 to May 2006, he was the U.S. Trade Representative and describes himself as the "quarterback" of the drive to pass the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in Congress.

In fact, Portman won in spite of his views on free trade, which the Democrats attacked as responsible for the losses of thousands of jobs in Ohio.

If President Obama plays his cards right, he might be able to use Portman to help build support in Congress for three pending free trade deals that languished under the leadership of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with Colombia, South Korea, and Panama. A GOP-led House could be very open to such outreach.

Portman replaces retiring George Voinovich (R-OH). Ironically, his main opposition on the issue of free trade could come from Sherrod Brown, now the senior senator from Portman’s Ohio.

Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.

Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.

A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.

Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin

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