I'm not running for office, so I can say this:
Jobs, schmobs. Moving toward freer trade is not about job gains or job losses; it's about producing more goods and services more efficiently for more people -- i.e. about increasing everyone's consumption possibilities.
Don Boudreaux says it well in his open letter published at Cafe Hayek.
Politicians routinely sell freer trade as a source of net job and export creation. Yet economists since Adam Smith – and ranging across the ideological spectrum from Milton Friedman to Paul Krugman – have consistently rejected such claims as justifications for free trade. Economists understand that freer trade neither increases nor decreases the total number of jobs in an economy. Instead, freer trade changes the kinds of jobs performed in an economy by shifting jobs from industries that are comparatively inefficient to industries that are comparatively efficient.
Likewise, the correct case for freer trade does not depend upon exports growing by more than imports. First, there’s no reason to expect freer trade to result in such an outcome. Second, such an outcome, should it occur, might well be lamentable for it could reveal that investment opportunities at home are consistently less attractive than are investment opportunities abroad.