Slashdot Mirror
Trump Proposes Rejoining Trans-Pacific Partnership (nytimes.com)
According to The New York Times, "President Trump told a gathering of farm state lawmakers and governors on Thursday morning that he was directing his advisers to look into rejoining the multicountry trade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source)." The TPP was a contentious issue during the 2016 presidential election as both Democrats and Republicans attacked it. After signaling during the election that he would pull out of the trade deal "on day one" of his presidency, Trump followed through with his plans. From the report: Rejoining the 11-country pact could be a significant change in fortune for many American industries that stood to benefit from the trade agreement's favorable terms and Republican lawmakers who supported the pact. The deal, which was negotiated by the Obama administration, was largely viewed as a tool to prod China into making the type of economic reforms that the United States and others have long wanted. Both Democrats and Republicans attacked the deal during the president campaign, but many business leaders were disappointed when Mr. Trump withdrew from the agreement, arguing that the United States would end up with less favorable terms attempting to broker an array of individual trade pacts and that scrapping the deal would empower China.
Mr. Trump's decision to reconsider the deal comes as the White House tries to find ways to protect the agriculture sector, which could be badly damaged by the president's trade approach. The risk of an escalating trade war with China has panicked American farmers and ranchers, who send many of their products abroad. China has responded to Mr. Trump's threat of tariffs on as much as $150 billion worth of Chinese goods by placing its own tariffs on American pork, and threatening taxes on soybeans, sorghum, corn and beef. Many American agriculturalists maintain that the easiest way to help them is to avoid a trade war with China in the first place. And many economists say the best way to combat a rising China and pressure it to open its market is through multilateral trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which create favorable trading terms for participants.
Mr. Trump's decision to reconsider the deal comes as the White House tries to find ways to protect the agriculture sector, which could be badly damaged by the president's trade approach. The risk of an escalating trade war with China has panicked American farmers and ranchers, who send many of their products abroad. China has responded to Mr. Trump's threat of tariffs on as much as $150 billion worth of Chinese goods by placing its own tariffs on American pork, and threatening taxes on soybeans, sorghum, corn and beef. Many American agriculturalists maintain that the easiest way to help them is to avoid a trade war with China in the first place. And many economists say the best way to combat a rising China and pressure it to open its market is through multilateral trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which create favorable trading terms for participants.
My intuition tells me the TPP is a military deal disguised as an economic one.
Actually the original US-backed TPP had all sorts of IP / copyright / licensing non-sense. Once the US left, the rest of the countries dropped that chapter and signed up for the rest:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership#New_negotiations_and_CPTPP
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_and_Progressive_Agreement_for_Trans-Pacific_Partnership
Nobody "makes money from the Presidency" from the salary. The salary is smaller than some programmers earn around Silicon Valley.
Trump has, from day one, refused to separate himself from his businesses. The Secret Service, for example, has paid several million dollars to Mar a Lago, and he's also earned tens (maybe hundreds) of millions from people paying (now higher) membership fees to Mar a Lago so they can get access to him.
That's just one of his businesses, and he's making the money not from his name or reputation, but directly from abusing his power as President.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
3. ...
Except that's not what it's for at all, it's for companies to sue gov'ts when they change laws to the detriment of companies, even if those laws are to protect the environment, public rights, public health etc etc and Investor State Disputes have already done this and awarded large payouts to companies who wanted to do shit things, they then got compensated because they couldn't. This has nothing to do with being competitive because it effects all companies equally being that it's typically global corporations that are doing the suing . And these cases are settled in kangaroo courts by people who work for the very same corporations (revolving door etc) so they are extremely biased.
Treaties like TPP do f*** all for citizens, they screw people over completely, treaties like this are literally written by corporation's lawyers to benefit corporations.
When's the last time we had an effective treaty that improved labour conditions or stopped tax avoidance?
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.