Trump: I'll Ditch TPP Trade Deal on Day One of My Presidency (arstechnica.com)

US President-elect Donald Trump has confirmed that the U.S. will pull out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) -- a trade deal involving 12 Pacific Rim nations -- "on day one" of his presidency. From a report on ArsTechnica: Trump, in a YouTube video outlining plans for his first 100 days in office, said: "I'm going to issue our notification of intent to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a potential disaster for our country." He added: "Instead, we will negotiate fair, bilateral trade deals that bring jobs and industry back on to American shores." An emphasis on bilateral trade deals may call into question both the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), involving dozens of nations, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Although the latter is between the US and the European Union, the complex political structure of the EU means that effectively 28 nations are involved and can influence the outcome of the deal. This was demonstrated by the dramatic intervention of the Walloon regional government in the signing of CETA, the bloc's trade deal with Canada.

Comments

Do you now realize why Trump won?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bernie Sanders' supporter here. I didn't vote on Nov. 8th, because I simply couldn't back a lobbyist like Clinton. By killing the TPP, and maybe also TiSA and TTIP, Trump has just taken the most progressive political choice in the last 40 years, it's the first real reversal of the globalization process, something unthinkable until a few years ago. Clinton would have surely "renegotiated" the TPP, and after few useless and cosmetic changes, passed it. After all, it was "the gold standard" for her. Obama himself wanted it, and he's technically supposed to be more progressive than Clinton.

Surely I don't like many of Trump's proposals (slash taxes also for the rich, "clean" coal...), but on trade he could be the most "leftist" president in decades.

Instead of complaining, next time choose the right candidate at the Democratic primaries.

Re:Do you now realize why Trump won?

[Immerman]

I would assume tarrifs and other protectionist measures, such as every country has done since international trade became a driving force in our economies. Free trade is a fairly recent phenomena, and it has primarily benefited the developing nations and the multinational corporate gatekeepers. It's probably long past time to reevaluate our position.

Really there's only a very few options in the face of current economic realities, though the details can be tweaked:
1) Globalization, which gets us import cheap products today at the expense of exporting the associated wealth, jobs, and industry to nations that lack our protections for workers and the environment and can thus operate much more cheaply (which in the long term will likely lead to...)
2) Remove our own worker and environmental protections so that we can compete on a global market - i.e. reduce the wealth and standard of living of hard-working Americans to that of their counterparts in China, India, Africa, etc.

3) Implement some form of economic protectionism so that American made products can compete, at least in our local markets, with those from developing nations

And I suppose also
4) Reintroduce an aggressive "Made in America" campaign to encourage people to pay substantially more for the same products made locally, so that the wealth and jobs remain in the country. That worked once before, it might work again, though I believe Americans' median wealth (as distinct from income) has declined considerably since then, so it may be a much harder sell.

Re:Do you now realize why Trump won?

[Immerman]

You're right, it doesn't. And trade can indeed be a positive sum game, most of modern civilization is based on that, right down to the fact that I can trade my computer skills for someones automotive skills so that we both come out ahead (likely with money as and intermediary in a multi-stage exchange, but still).

The problem specifically comes when we engage in free trade agreements that will obviously disadvantage whole sectors of our economy without ensuring there's at least a credible idea as to what those displaced workers will do instead. Effectively we're "outsourcing" medium- skill manufacturing jobs to our trading partners, without making any effort to create new medium-skill jobs to replace them - virtually all new job growth has been in the low-skill (and low-pay) service sector, while virtually all of the gains from outsourcing the old ones went to a few people in charge.

Such trade deals may well be good for "our economy" according to some arbitrary measurement such as GDP, but there's nothing inherently good about the economy - it's a tool created to serve our purposes, and it does no good to improve the hammer at the expense of the carpenter.

So the question must be asked, what is the purpose of the economy? I would say that fundamentally it exists to facilitate interpersonal trade so than we can improve our lives more efficiently. As such, anything that benefits "the economy" at the expense of the people is something to be opposed.

Engaging in free trade agreements without a clear concept of how it will benefit the people of this country is, at best, magical thinking, and at worse a treasonous misuse of government authority for the benefit of the few.

Re:False decisiveness.

[meta-monkey]

I think he's going to keep a lot of them. It won't be reported like that, though. The media has learned nothing and is right back to lying and the demoralization propaganda, so expect stories like "Trump lied about being Hitler and is going back on his promise to gas all Mexican muslim gay jews, and boy are his evil nazi supporters mad about it!"

Re:Great for China!

[LostInTaiwan]

In trade, China needs the U.S. more than vice-versa.

Exactly, and China knows this. That is why China has been aggressively seeking alternative markets worldwide. Everywhere from Central and South America to Africa, not to mention the rest of Asia. China is also busy trying to build up their own internal consumption and pushed RMB to be a part of SDR.

China knows its military expansion is only made possible by its economic success, and we know this too. Unlike other Asian and European countries where we use trade as a tool to either entice democratic reforms or crush authoritarian regime's ability to finance its military, we've met our match with China.

I am not a fan of TPP but I view TPP as our attempt to rebalance world trade in the Asia away from its current sinocentric hegemony. If we want to take away TPP, what are we replacing it with?

Globalism is not the problem. Plenty of high wage countries still have robust manufacturing sectors and take care of its working class. Unfortunately for us, the chants of "U-S-A" drowns out any discussion and we look inwards to rehash our past failed policies instead of looking outwards to study how others thrives in a globalized market.

Re:No principles.

[bluefoxlucid]

What I don't want is the continuing idea that globalization and trade are killing jobs. Automation and recycling have killed 5-6 jobs IIRC for 1 job lost to globalization.

Dude, come all the way over already.

"Automation" is a fancy new scare name for technical progress. Technical progress and trade are essentially the same: they create wealth.

Technical progress lead America from a labor force of 90% farm workers in 1790 to 26% in 1900, to 12% in 1950, and to under 2% today. Do you see 88% of our labor force unemployed? Of course not. Neither the farm tractor, nor fertilizer, nor GMO, nor the wooden shipping pallet destroyed all jobs forever; these things freed up labor to perform other tasks. That's why food costs in 1900 were 40% of the median American family's income, in 1950 33%, and today around 12% even though we eat outside of home a lot more. We essentially pay servants to cook and serve our food, and still pay about 1/3 as much to eat as we did 60 years ago.

The threats are a matter of rate. All of them.

If you unemploy 30% of the labor force in one six-month swoop of the guillotine, your economy falls apart. Mass-unemployment means a collapse of consumer purchasing power, removing the revenue streams required to pay other workers, terminating more jobs. Eventually the dust settles on a country that can't raise enough taxes to carry the unemployed because they're all not working--no labor, no production, no wealth. Money represents what's made and sold, and the making and selling requires labor; technical progress reduces that labor, and half the labor means half the wage paid, thus less money cost, which is how prices eventually fall--with the help of ever-mounting economic pressure.

Unemploy people at a slower rate than those pressures drive prices down and you find consumers gaining additional buying power: wages don't decrease, but wage-hours paid for products do, and the few unemployed are easily supported by our welfare system with only a tiny portion of our gain. We seek to buy new things with the money we have--and the force of hundreds of millions of consumers with just TEN DOLLARS now-unspent means billions of revenue for new products (including buying more of the same old products). One billion dollars represents roughly 60,000 minimum-wage jobs, or nearly 0.04% of the labor force--every 1% swing requires a $150 reduction of expenses per consumer to recover the lost jobs.

That goes for both trade and technical progress. Self-driving cars and flying delivery drones? You want the Government to get regulation out to enable that PDQ. If the technology develops to the point where we know it's ready-to-go, but the Government hasn't given the green-light, eventual regulation to allow it will result in rapid replacement of delivery drivers, freight trucking drivers, and all form of mail carriers. Put up the regulation before anyone's ready to do it, and those job losses will come in patches here and there as the technology develops, as suitability increases, and as businesses individually become comfortable with the risks at different times. Once someone's job is gone, you have to wait for the business to be unable to keep prices at a point to simply take profit--they're certainly not unwilling--and that will happen, but not on the same damned day.

The obsession with creating jobs is a tricky one. I've notated it before. It's both good and bad, depending on your goals. The long-term consequences of Malthusian growth erase either: an increase in unemployment will vanish in several years if the economy doesn't get worse, thanks to more early retirement, longer delays to enter workforce (that whole "everyone goes to grad school in a recession" thing), death of the poorest (sucks), and, ultimately, slower birth rate; while a decrease in unemployment will vanish due to later retirement, faster entry to the workforce, and higher birthrate