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Someone please explain why Trump backed out of TPP
The real reason is because of sheer ignorance, arrogance and bull-headedness. One reason is because he was not happy that Mexico is one of the TPP members, but the main reason is because Trump saw that Singapore is one of the eleven TPP members and he thought that Singapore was a city in China and he didn't want to deal with China. So he backed out not realizing that Singapore is not part of China, that it is a leading global city-state and island country in Southeast Asia. He also didn't bother to take note of the fact that China is not one of the TPP members and has nothing to do with the TPP. After he realized that Singapore is a separate country in its own right and that China has no involvement with the TPP it was too late for him to back-pedal and he was too proud to admit his mistake so he stuck to his first decision to back out of TPP. So no TPP for USA but that means more advantages for all the other TPP members as a result.
I don't think the real driver behind the agreement was economics. Most economists agree that, at least in the short run, it would lead to some economic dislocation. The long term economic benefits may outweigh the short term costs, but the true value in the agreement was the prospect of boxing China in on the global chessboard. The potential economic benefits of TPP are ancillary to this objective IMO. Trade is not a zero sum game, but geopolitics is. The more power China has to make the rules and call the shots, the less America does.
The real driver was absolutely economics: this was intended to be the model next-gen free trade agreement. It would have been the first multilateral trade agreement with labor & enviro standards. It offered protection for IP (big for advanced economies), also setting boundaries for foreign direct investment, e-commerce, corruption, and State-backed enterprise. And it offered trade advantages in the world's busiest trade zone: the Pacific Rim.
From the World Bank: "[TPP] could raise GDP in member countries by an average of 1.1 percent by 2030. It could also increase member countries' trade by 11 percent by 2030, and represent a boost to regional trade growth, which had slowed to about 5 percent, on average, during 2010-14 from about 10 percent during 1990-07."
The economics were there.
The geostrategy simply follows on: this sizeable economic boost is only available to China if it signs on to the total package: IP protection, labor/enviro standards, limits on State-run enterprise, boundaries for FDI, e-commerce, and corruption.
The real driver was absolutely economics: this was intended to be the model next-gen free trade agreement. It would have been the first multilateral trade agreement with labor & enviro standards. It offered protection for IP (big for advanced economies), also setting boundaries for foreign direct investment, e-commerce, corruption, and State-backed enterprise. And it offered trade advantages in the world's busiest trade zone: the Pacific Rim.
From the World Bank: "[TPP] could raise GDP in member countries by an average of 1.1 percent by 2030. It could also increase member countries' trade by 11 percent by 2030, and represent a boost to regional trade growth, which had slowed to about 5 percent, on average, during 2010-14 from about 10 percent during 1990-07."
The economics were there.
The geostrategy simply follows on: this sizeable economic boost is only available .... <snip> .... if it signs on to the total package: IP protection, labor/enviro standards, limits on State-run enterprise, boundaries for FDI, e-commerce, and corruption.
Total package which Trump wouldn't want to sign into either.
He didn't actually explain why Trump backed out of TPP. He only pasted a link to a Chicago Tribune article that lays out some of the potential negative ramifications of the U.S. being a signatory to TPP. It's common in this forum for people to simply post a link in favor of a position rather than articulate their own reasons for that position because they don't know much about the issues and sometimes have no real intellectual curiosity with respect to those issues.
I don't profess to be an expert on trade, countervailing duties, import-export banks, etc. But to the extent that I'll comment on something like that, I'll at least read a primer on the basic contours of a proposed law before turning to politically charged opinion pieces. With Obamacare, for example, many critics have strong opinions about it without understanding how it is intended to work. It would be like adopting someone else's opinion about the Golden State Warriors before understanding the basic groundrules for the game of basketball.
Vox tends to write very succinct "explainers" for public policy proposals so that you get the basic gist of proposed laws as well as arguments for and against them. Marginal Revolution has very insightful analysis from a more libertarian perspective whereas Brad DeLong has very informed analysis from a more center-left perspective.
Yeah, well my point was at least they provided something basic instead of making posts that were essentially, "crooked hillary wants us all in communism" or "orange cheeto will have us all coal miners" type garbage.
I'll gladly take what they posted over what amounts to thread killing gradeschooler comments that clog everything up with neeneer neener partisan doo-doo head type posts.
One thing a resident C-D trade/TPP expert could help me out with is the following:
The U.S. does not have a free trade agreement with China. Yet China has "taken" jobs away from the U.S. If jobs flee U.S. shores for countries we don't have free trade agreements with, then how is not signing a free trade agreement going to stop the offshoring of U.S. jobs?
Just like with NAFTA, you could off-shore before but the law made it MUCH easier\lucrative and the floodgates opened.
Trump campaigned on killing TPP and explained why. Whether people agree with him or not is fine, but it's silly to say 'because Obama'.
All of the presidential candidates opposed TPP during their candidacy. Many Democratic groups opposed it (AFL-CIO). It's not hard to figure out why such a controversial program was killed.
1) Why are you directing "because Obama" in a response to me? That was another poster.
2) Yes, all the presidential candidates did. 20 years ago when the labor unions were about 3x stronger, they also opposed NAFTA. Just saying.
The goal of TPP was to counter Chinese influence. I have yet to see one informed conservative argument against TPP.
Hillary lost in part because of her support of TPP. (she pretended for awhile she didn't fully support it). The "left" wanted no part of it. It was just another corporate sell out.
You say that sarcastically, but there is much truth. Any agreement Obama entered into did not benefit the USA,
from TPP to the Iran agreement to the stupid Paris accords, etc.
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