CLEVELAND — To see the recalibration on trade in the post-Trump Republican Party, look no further than David Perdue, a freshman senator from Georgia.

Perdue ran as a free-trader, voted to give President Obama the power to negotiate a Pacific trade deal that Congress can’t amend, and helped vote down an amendment on currency manipulation that trade supporters considered a poison pill. At a forum Wednesday sponsored by the Bipartisan Policy Center and the Milken Institute, he sounded a lot like House Speaker Paul Ryan making the case.

“The American consumer is out of gas. If you want to get growth back to 3 percent, you’d better tap into the middle class of India.”

Perdue said U.S. businesses need a level playing field to be able to sell their products abroad. He also noted that Americans are aging, which will lead to lower levels of consumption.

“This is the economic future of the United States, in my opinion,” he said. “The American consumer is out of gas. If you want to get growth back to 3 percent, you’d better tap into the middle class of India.”

And yet, as Donald Trump prepares to accept the Republican nomination for president Thursday evening, the change he has wrought within the party is evident. Perdue, 66, was an early and enthusiastic backer of the New York billionaire compared to many of his colleagues — some of whom are still holding out.

Like Trump, Perdue ran for office as a businessman-outsider. He said in an interview with LifeZette that support for trade does not mean blind support. He said that any trade agreement has to be right on the fine print. The point is to reduce foreign tariffs and other barriers to U.S. products while protecting Americans from unfair trade practices, he said.

That is why, Perdue said, he has not taken a final position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the controversial pact negotiated by President Obama that would create a common market with 12 nations comprising 40 percent of the world’s economy. He said he is still reviewing the details of the agreement — which runs more than 5,554 pages.

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Those details matter, Perdue said, adding that he believes his position aligns with Trump’s calls for negotiating better terms with trading partners.

“I’d quite frankly rather have Donald Trump get in there and have his authorship on it,” he said.

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Do Perdue’s comments represent a genuine recalibration or merely a temporary pause? Only time will answer that question, but some critics of the deal believe the GOP has been permanently changed.

“There’s a genuine movement within the Republican Party. Donald Trump has brought the Republican Party back to its roots,” said American Jobs Alliance Executive Director Curtis Ellis, who compared Trump’s trade views to William McKinley’s at the turn of the 20th century. “There is a genuine rethinking, and the party will not go back.”

Public opinion has remained consistently and overwhelmingly opposed to the TPP. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recently nixed the idea of bringing it up for a vote in a lame-duck session after the election, before the new Congress takes office.

Opponents argue that the pact would destroy American jobs and depress wages, extending a malaise that seen the percentage of adults employed or seeking work drop and the median household income decline over the past decade. Even a report cited by the Obama administration projects only modest gains over the next 15 years — a .23 percent increase in annual real income, a .15 percent in the gross domestic product, and a .7 percent rise in employment.

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Even some ardent free-traders have soured on large, multinational compacts in recent years. On the Bipartisan Policy Center panel that Perdue participated on, moderator Larry Kudlow said bad actors like China have undercut arguments for trade under classic economic theory.

“Don’t you get tired and pissed off at China?” he asked. “They lie, cheat, and steal.”

China would not be part of the 12-nation trade compact — but Japan would be. And Kudlow said that nation is the second-worst offender.

Perdue responded that a free trade zone is one way to contain China. He told LifeZette that is why he voted to give fast-track negotiating authority to Obama.

“What I want to do is open the dialogue,” he said. “We cannot allow China to come in and develop their own trade bloc.”

But he said he still has not determined if the deal Obama returned with does the job.

“It depends on the details,” Perdue said.