Impossible to gauge; no details have been shared. Even Trump’s statement that “China will buy $50 billion worth of US farm goods” is dubious; over what time period? Nobody knows? If the deal is settled, why isn’t it signed?

We’ve seen and heard this rhetoric before, and in the past it has all faded into dust as one party or the other backed away. While I want to believe there will be a deal, something I didn’t think would happen until after the election, I’m cautiously awaiting details of the supposed deal, and frankly, not yet convinced that it will happen. And putting off “Phase two” until after the elections? What ever happened to “I like trade wars because they’re easy to win.” Apparently not. And underestimating their complexity was the first mistake, and it won’t be over until the fat lady sings, years from now, if ever.

OK, this may well be a gotcha question aimed at the Clintons, but let's look at it seriously…first the lay of the land: The bill was passed with bipartisan support after a tooth and nail battle in the House of Reps. It was passed when the U.S. trade deficit with China was already high. Traditionally democrat-voting blocs like labor unions hated it and work diligently against it. It was, at the time, described by the administration and backers with glowing praise but, tellingly, not in budgetary terms.

"...major step toward answering some of the central challenges of this new century…",
"...help shape the future of the world's most prosperous nation and to reaffirm our own global leadership…",
"...likely it will be to liberate the human potential of [China's] people."

Immediately, deficit hawks, (notably Robert E. Scott) and some in the administration, (quietly, behind closed doors,) were not so effusive:

"Administration’s own analysis suggests spiraling deficits, job losses"

“Let’s be clear as to why a trade deficit might decrease in the short term. China exports far more to the U.S. than it imports [from] the U.S….It (http://U.S….It) will not grow as much as it would have grown without this agreement and over time clearly it will shrink with this agreement.”

Well, this was hardly full throated cheerleading for the agreement's budgetary effects. To date, we still endure the deficit for reasons that Americans are still addicted to the comparatively cheap prices in spite of the prognosis for longer term fiscal health. Moreover, the China trade deal was only a secondary salvo that began with the Bush Administration-based passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993.

The hard facts are these: Both administrations knew full well both bills would be painful for Americans. But both administrations also realized that these bills were absolutely crucial, not only to our country's long term financial health, but to its very dynamics on the world stage…it's very survival. Because no one with access to all the statistics, data, and models of the financial patterns of the world could dispute: Globalization, and with it geo-political power on increasingly financial terms, was spreading unstoppably and rolling our direction. It was either leap onto the speeding train or fall under it.

The China deal in particular was of utmost importance. We were not the first to indulge in open trade with China; far from it. China represented the 20th Century gold rush where, if the deal wasn't made here, if the agreements weren't made to our best advantage, they would immediately be made somewhere else, by someone else. This was the face of globalization.

And though support for these bills were, at least to some extent, bipartisan, the general public, then and now, hated them for the pain they would and did cause. Merely the mention of the World Trade Organization flares tempers and boils blood - to this day, fifteen and twenty-two years down the road.

While the final impact of these divisive treaties is as yet unwritten, several economic studies have since been released indicating the increase in trade lowered prices and increased the U.S. GDP by 0.7% throughout the following decade. On the other hand, per Mr. Scott and the Economic Policy Institute, the "Growing U.S. trade deficit with China cost more than 2.7 million jobs between 2001 and 2011, with job losses in every state."

Yet it must be repeated…these treaties were not enacted along party lines. They were a bitter pill no one liked, both that we all had to take. Personally? I HATE them. In theory, I love and embrace the concept of globalization, but when it hits your own wallet…

It's really not unlike the U.S. as a template for world democracy. We are already there, we don't see the problem; but democratic reforms in beleaguered nations is similarly painful in their effects.

It's a bitter pill, but it'll be good for you in the long term...

So what does Bill Clinton think of it all now? I'm betting, like the rest of us, he has mixed feelings. One thing is sure though: invoking past and future pain on the campaign trail is unreservedly bad strategy.