s0crates Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 Smart move by Trump today on the TPP, as I believe his opposition to it was what put him over the top in places like Michigan and Pennsylvania. It's interesting to see Bernie sided with Trump on this one while McCain opposed him. I know whose side I'm on in that equation. Don't get me wrong, I'm not at all trusting of a billionaire whose cabinet has more wealth than 20-30% of the country, but you have to give credit where it's due. I'll give Trump a point for keeping his promise and listening to the people on the TPP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zoony Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 Heres the thing... i dont know how anyome claims victory over this. No matter which side you are for or against The ripple effects of macroeconomic policy are so widespread the relative merits and/or negatives associated with the TPP are, in my opinion, unable to be measured. Politicians seem to be the only ones who are sure they are correct, imagine that Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
visionary Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
visionary Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedskinsFan44 Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 Other countries eager to fill the void. So what percentage of the world market are we backing away from? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FanboyOf91 Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 28 minutes ago, RedskinsFan44 said: Other countries eager to fill the void. So what percentage of the world market are we backing away from? With us in it, TPP represents 37% of global GDP, 25% of global trade. http://dfat.gov.au/trade/agreements/tpp/Pages/trans-pacific-partnership-agreement-tpp.aspx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FanboyOf91 Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Posted January 24, 2017 Author Share Posted January 24, 2017 "They took our trade agreement." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
s0crates Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 Trump's with her. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterMP Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 I'm not a huge fan of the TPP as I've pointed out in this thread (why special language for things like biologics in it? Does it make sense to treat old allies and stable democracies the same same as countries that are not really allies and have authoritarian regimes?). BUT I do think you have to remember there is a foreign policy component to it, the optics are bad, and just pulling out generally suggest that you are against trade. It isn't enforceable until it is approved by Congress. Why not go to the relevant countries and say, hey we're sort of busy here for the next month or so, give us 8 weeks, and then we'll sit down talk to you about it, and maybe we can tweak it to something that we can agree on? I know officially negotiations have concluded, but NAFTA was in the same state when Clinton took over, and he had issues with it. He didn't pull out, and they went back to the table and negotiated the things he had issues with. Just pulling out without any other sort of plan sends an anti-trade signal to the rest of the world and immediately opens the door for China to step in when the Trump administration is not really even up and running to deal with the changing dynamic. The world is going to change in the next few weeks here because Trump pulled out of the TPP, and he doesn't even have the people in place to make decisions about what we should do about it. Just by waiting to officially pull out, he could have held everything on pause until he had things in place to decide how they wanted to respond to different actions the other countries are going to make now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Posted January 24, 2017 Author Share Posted January 24, 2017 Peter, you're assuming that eight weeks from now, Trump will have a team in place that's competent to handle this. (And that he would let them). Although i I will freely admit that my completely uninformed gut says that what we've just done, is to create a pacific free trade zone, talk all of the countries into joining it, and then tell them to replace us with China. But, I'm uninformed. Heck, it's possible that even Trump knows more about this **** than I do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterMP Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 28 minutes ago, Larry said: Peter, you're assuming that eight weeks from now, Trump will have a team in place that's competent to handle this. (And that he would let them). Although i I will freely admit that my completely uninformed gut says that what we've just done, is to create a pacific free trade zone, talk all of the countries into joining it, and then tell them to replace us with China. But, I'm uninformed. Heck, it's possible that even Trump knows more about this **** than I do. There is a better chance he will 8 weeks then he does now and presumably he thinks he will. Assuming you are Trump and you think you are putting together a competent team, wouldn't it make more sense to give it a couple of weeks so that you have your team in place to respond to the situation as it changes due to you pulling out? I doubt that most of the countries will sign the same agreement with us as China. Countries like Vietnam are looking to sign agreements with us to balance out the power of China in the region. They aren't going to be quick to do something that is going to give China more power. (Also, I think that China's economy is going to have issues going forward. They have issues with demographics, and they only can run factories and build things that people aren't using for so long. And I suspect some of the people in the relevant countries have to be looking at the same thing. Tying yourself to a large company that has a history of unfair trade practices and is likely to have a struggling economy going forward isn't such a good idea.) But you never know what is going to happen, especially if some of the countries in the area are looking for quick economic growth now, and I'm not sure that you won't see a TPP w/o US and China in the future and if that happens, that it doesn't hurt us. (Realistically, I'm pro-trade and anti-protectionism. Some of these trade agreements have things in them that I think are unnecessary and probably hurt us, and I think we should work to minimize those things while recognizing it might not be possible to get a perfect trade agreement. I think Trump is generally anti-trade and pro-protectionism. (I posted something here before on Trump and his views on economics. It essentially argued that Trump sees every transaction/agreement as having a winner and a loser. He doesn't see or value that some transactions can benefit both parties. I think that is pretty accurate.) Trump is looking for deal where he (the US) is the winner. I think you can have deals where there is some give and take and in the end everybody is a winner.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Posted January 24, 2017 Author Share Posted January 24, 2017 Yeah, I've come around to the assumption that, in general, trade agreements are generally good. I also assume that any such agreement is a political sausage, and that it will contain clauses that are targeted at very specific special interests, and that that's where most of the negotiating takes place - haggling over the details. AND I assume that, as the Big Boy at the table where this deal was negotiated, we probably had the power to built in a lot of pro-US-special-interest ingredients into the sausage. And therefore, I have no doubt that we could have another round of arguing about the details, if we wanted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterMP Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 Looking, it looks like there is one agreement that China is already pushing for that has been under negotiation, and they have something else that they are pushing. http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-asia-idUKKBN15800V "China has proposed a counter pact, the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP) and has championed the Southeast Asian-backed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Hua said efforts on FTAAP should be stepped up, adding China hoped talks on RCEP could be concluded at an early date." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
No Excuses Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 4 hours ago, visionary said: Just as a reference point, I believe this trade deal took around 8ish years to be negotiated and agreed upon. The earliest drafts of the TPP go back all the way to 2005 and the US formally entered talks in 2008. I wonder how this impacts our treasury. Japan has overtaken China as our biggest creditor. If Japan is now looking to enter large scale trade agreements with China, and the international markets have concerns over our protectionism and long term economic standing, what incentive do they have to continue investment in our borders. It's really hard to understand how the world reacts to a US that is reducing its global footprint at a time when more and more of the global economy is becoming interconnected. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Posted January 24, 2017 Author Share Posted January 24, 2017 2 minutes ago, No Excuses said: If Japan is now looking to enter large scale trade agreements with China, and the international markets have concerns over our protectionism and long term economic standing, what incentive do they have to continue investment in our borders. Well, I think that the theory is that American protectionism will encourage foreigners to invest in the US. (To bypass the tariffs.) Not sure that that's a guaranteed result. Just attempting to explain somebody else's reasoning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hersh Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 I don't think Trump is pro-protectionism/anti-free trade. I think he was against TPP because it played well to the crowd. Like, most everything involving Trump, I don't think he actually has a plan to back up what he says. This dumb*** administration walked away from a lot of good things. Makes no sense not to improve the agreement if they felt it had problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Posted January 24, 2017 Author Share Posted January 24, 2017 OH, I suspect that for a lot of people, the big problem with TPP is that Obama touched it. But there's also certainly an element of opposing it being a really easy sell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hersh Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 I understand the concern about jobs leaving the country, but then they should attempt to address it within the context of the current document. Otherwise, I'm not sure what they will put in bilateral agreements that will keep jobs here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
No Excuses Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 53 minutes ago, Larry said: Well, I think that the theory is that American protectionism will encourage foreigners to invest in the US. (To bypass the tariffs.) Not sure that that's a guaranteed result. Just attempting to explain somebody else's reasoning. There inherent flaw of this argument I guess is that it assumes the investments will go towards helping the people who would otherwise be harmed by FTAs. Ultimately, I think the current opposition to free trade is about 20 years too late. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
visionary Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
visionary Posted January 25, 2017 Share Posted January 25, 2017 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
visionary Posted January 26, 2017 Share Posted January 26, 2017 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Posted January 26, 2017 Author Share Posted January 26, 2017 26 minutes ago, visionary said: You mean, a trade war might make it tough for us to bully other countries into buying our agricultural surplus? Don't know where some people get these ideas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hersh Posted January 26, 2017 Share Posted January 26, 2017 6 minutes ago, Larry said: You mean, a trade war might make it tough for us to bully other countries into buying our agricultural surplus? Don't know where some people get these ideas. Front page article on this very thing in the Raleigh paper today. I'm not sure what farmers expected from Trump cause he said he would do this. Seems like a fair number of Trump supporters didn't think he would do what he said. This will make for interesting bed fellows Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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