Trade policy seen key as White House race heats up

By Nick Zieminski

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Thursday night's victories for Republican Mike Huckabee and Democrat Barack Obama in the Iowa presidential caucuses will bring increased attention to the candidates' trade proposals as they head off to New Hampshire for round two of the primary season.

The loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs in states with early primaries will probably influence voters and may have longer-term implications in the race.

Anxiety about the state of the U.S. economy, including a weak housing market and slowing jobs growth -- especially following Friday's anaemic employment data -- is likely to influence voters' view of the U.S. role in the global economy, say experts on trade and manufacturing.

"In the early states -- Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina -- trade and globalization and anxiety about the future are top of mind for a lot of people," said Scott Paul, director of the nonpartisan Alliance for American Manufacturing.

Manufacturing is the No. 1 sector in those states' economies, where textiles and furniture have faced overseas competition.

The loss of 2,600 jobs at a Maytag plant in Newton, Iowa, was a sore spot in that state, said Paul, whose group promotes policies to bolster U.S. manufacturing.

"One of the reasons that's underappreciated -- why Huckabee has risen so dramatically -- is that among the Republican candidates, he alone has been able to identify with the economic anxiety people are feeling, and he's been able to articulate it," Paul said.

On Thursday, Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister, and Obama, a U.S. senator from Illinois, won the caucuses -- the first test in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign.