He'll do just what the article says, make show votes for the folks back home when Pelosi doesn't need his vote, and vote with her the rest of the time. All smoke and mirrors.
Trade is an easy issue for him, the Dems have been anti-free trade for decades.
And, in places like NC-11, free trade has become a tough sell, and with good reason, from their experience and perspective. A breezy "oh, just go back to community college" doesn't cut it, with someone who has been put out of a job three times in the past five years, due to manufacturing facilities closing here and moving production to Guatemala or some other third world nation. I'm aquainted with several people in just such a position, and they're feeling anything but positive about Republicans due to trade policy. Try to tell them that NAFTA was signed into law by Clinton, and they come back with the Republican Congress that sent it to him. There's a problem here, and until it's recognized, you're going to see a repeat of this scenario, where ever there has been job loss due to trade policy. It's going to hand House seats over to Democrats on a silver platter.