View Full Version : TPP DOA
I see the President has issued an order pulling the US out of any consideration of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This is hardly surprising, as both major candidates (with varying degrees of sincerity and enthusiasm) spoke against it. Still, this is one of the many Trump campaign promises I was hoping would be broken. I thought the TPP was something Obama got right.
I'm a free trade guy, who has always believed competing on equal or near-equal terms in world trade would be better for us in the long run than digging a moat around the economy. I don't think this will result in many new high-paying factoring jobs. It will more likely accelerate the development of industrial robotics and 3D printing.
I don't have a lot of confidence that Trump's masterful negotiating style will accomplish what prior trade delegations could not. I'd call this a lose-lose for America and Asia.
Ultralight
1-23-17, 4:55pm
This is just what I have been hoping for!
Within a few months I should be able to quit my soul-crushing cubicle job doing data entry in a windowless basement and go to work at a newly minted Ford factory to have my soul crushed on an assembly line in a windowless factory attaching widgets to other widgets!
Funny, this was one I thought the new President got right, but then I still think NAFTA was a bad idea.
This is just what I have been hoping for!
Within a few months I should be able to quit my soul-crushing cubicle job doing data entry in a windowless basement and go to work at a newly minted Ford factory to have my soul crushed on an assembly line in a windowless factory attaching widgets to other widgets!
Don't you need your soul crushed in a public service job for student loan purposes?
Ultralight
1-23-17, 5:25pm
Don't you need your soul crushed in a public service job for student loan purposes?
Great. I guess the TPPDOA does nothing for me!
Great. I guess the TPPDOA does nothing for me!
Of course it will! You'll have the satisfaction of paying more for domestic-sourced useless junk to make America great again.
Ultralight
1-23-17, 5:38pm
Of course it will! You'll have the satisfaction of paying more for domestic-sourced useless junk to make America great again.
Not buying it.
I guess I can simply play no part in making America great again.
Sad day for a populist.
Bernie and Trump were allies in rejecting the TPP, so today I looked up what Bernie's reasons (https://www.sanders.senate.gov/download/the-trans-pacific-trade-tpp-agreement-must-be-defeated?inline=file) were. I'm sure they overlap Trump's reasons to some extent.
My fear is that it would give corporations free range to dictate policies and practices that will hurt small farmers and the environment--it's not as if that's not happening already.
Here's a fact-checking analysis of the TPP published last year by the Washington Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/02/11/fact-checking-the-campaigns-for-and-against-the-tpp-trade-deal/?utm_term=.d55f8b1c384f
Ultralight
1-23-17, 5:42pm
Bernie and Trump were allies in rejecting the TPP, so today I looked up what Bernie's reasons (https://www.sanders.senate.gov/download/the-trans-pacific-trade-tpp-agreement-must-be-defeated?inline=file) were. I'm sure they overlap Trump's reasons to some extent.
My fear is that it would give corporations free range to dictate policies and practices that will hurt small farmers and the environment--it's not as if that's not happening already.
Here's a fact-checking analysis of the TPP published last year by the Washington Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/02/11/fact-checking-the-campaigns-for-and-against-the-tpp-trade-deal/?utm_term=.d55f8b1c384f The next 8 years will deliver the environment a likely knock-out punch. We better hug them trees before they all become toothpicks and McMansions!
The next 8 years will deliver the environment a likely knock-out punch. We better hug them trees before they all become toothpicks and McMansions!
I know. :(
Hopefully it will be the next 4 years, not 8.
ETA: Just a sidebar, because it's a bit off-topic, but here's an essay (http://www.sevenstories.com/blogs/35-one-does-not-hate-when-one-can-despise-derrick-jensen-on-donald-trump-and-how-we-got-here) by environmentalist Derrick Jensen on his reaction to Trump's election. He characterizes the two parties as basically two sides of the same coin--playing good-cop/bad-cop to the exploitative practices inherent in our current system.
I may not agree with everything he says, but I do love reading Derrick Jensen. I think he's right on many things.
The next 8 years will deliver the environment a likely knock-out punch. We better hug them trees before they all become toothpicks and McMansions!
I'm flying over the Arctic ice right now in a very nice jet that even Al Gore would like, and I can see from here thinner and more broken-up ice than is usual for the season. Well, back to my fois grois. Enjoy!
freshstart
1-23-17, 8:39pm
I love reading about your exploits, you should write a book
My fear is that it would give corporations free range to dictate policies and practices that will hurt small farmers and the environment--it's not as if that's not happening already.
I think it's less about the ideal than the better of the the viable alternatives.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/23/tpp-unlike-chinas-rcep-has-goals-on-worker-protection-corruption-environment.html
A China (http://www.cnbc.com/china/)-backed treaty has become a front runner for setting new trade standards in the Asia-Pacific region after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump (http://www.cnbc.com/donald-trump/) confirmed he would withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/21/japan-china-stepping-in-as-trump-vows-tpp-withdrawal.html), which was signed by 12 countries including the United States in February but has not yet been ratified.
The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/16/chinas-gain-the-collapse-of-the-tpp-could-be-bad-for-everyone.html) (RCEP), which involves 16 nations in the Asia-Pacific area, is seen as an alternative to the TPP for lowering tariffs and facilitating growth in its members. China, which was excluded from the TPP, is leading the RCEP.
However, the RCEP lacks some of the "lofty goals" set for the TPP, including worker protection and targeting corruption.
The following are provisions of the TPP that are not currently included in the RCEP:
Labor standards
Environmental protection
Free information flow
Anti-corruption
For all the talk of confronting China, we just ceded home field advantage.
Yossarian, that was the same info that I was reading so I think North America just lost an important check to China's influence.
Has anyone examined the longterm consequences of the decision to scrap TPP for the nations who are now being controlled by China?
How far along is the Chinese currency the dominant in the world vs the US$? I have no idea at present but have read that China would like their currency to set the global standard. If you are not in the game, how can you compete or have an interest?
Yossarian, that was the same info that I was reading so I think North America just lost an important check to China's influence.
Has anyone examined the longterm consequences of the decision to scrap TPP for the nations who are now being controlled by China?
How far along is the Chinese currency the dominant in the world vs the US$? I have no idea at present but have read that China would like their currency to set the global standard. If you are not in the game, how can you compete or have an interest?
This action would certainly seem to cede a lot of influence to China at a time when they have been aggressively seeking it.
Along with what Trump has been saying about NATO, we seem to be progressing from Obama's policy of managed decline to a baldly isolationist stance.
ApatheticNoMore
1-24-17, 12:38pm
This is just what I have been hoping for!
Within a few months I should be able to quit my soul-crushing cubicle job doing data entry in a windowless basement and go to work at a newly minted Ford factory to have my soul crushed on an assembly line in a windowless factory attaching widgets to other widgets!
silly, noone is advocating a world where you can just quit your soul sucking job pretty much. Believe me NOONE is, not even Bernie Sanders. Ok, ok, some anarchists and radical unions are. That's fine but there is a time for more immediate politics. Not everyone has a graduate degree so they can work that soul sucking job either. I doubt your job is the worst out there in terms of the work world. I believe it's soul sucking, but there are jobs that people are regularly getting serious injuries and dying at.
This is one of the few things Trump got right, and liberals have so completely lost their @#$# minds with Trump derangement syndrome, they can't even give him that. Really put a fork in them, they are done for. There are plenty of things Trump won't get right, so there will still be plenty of room for disagreeing with Trump, this was one of the one's he has. The argument against the TPP wasn't just: oh happy happy, the glory days of American manufacturing are coming back! But that these laws make governments (globally) making laws to benefit their environment and people much more difficult.
Of course it will! You'll have the satisfaction of paying more for domestic-sourced useless junk to make America great again.
American made junk that will fall apart right away, unless you are poor and can't afford anything better, if you buy junk that will fall apart right away, that's your own problem. I can't make you a better shopper :~). But European and American and so on products will at least be produced with some environmental and labor standards (ok the caveat here as long as they aren't made with prison labor in the U.S. - I wish Trump was against prison labor as well! But eh he's not the ideal candidate lets just say ... I don't think he's ever expressed an opinion on it at all)
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