Rekindle efforts on Pacific Rim plan, congressman urges U.S.

WASHINGTON

It’s long past time for the United States to work with Canada and other allies on a new strategy for the Pacific Rim, and the path to the new NAFTA would make an excellent road map, says a prominent trade voice on Capitol Hill.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer, chairman of the House Ways and Means trade subcommittee, recalled his efforts to make the TransPacific Partnership more palatable to critics before President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the deal in 2017.

That same process helped NAFTA’s successor, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, get past detractors in Congress, and could do the same for TPP should Joe Biden win the White House, Blumenauer said Wednesday.

“It absolutely makes sense for the United States to work with those countries to be able to define the rules of the road in the Pacific region and beyond,” he told a virtual audience in a Q-and-A organized by the Washington International Trade Association.

Without the U.S. at the TPP table, which currently includes 11 nations including Canada, Mexico, Japan, Australia and Singapore under a modified version of the deal, China will continue to step in and “fill the void,” he said.

Canada has since shelved its own freetrade efforts with China, citing in part the continuing detention of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, as well as the mass incarceration of largely Muslim Uighurs and disregard for what was supposed to be a “one country, two systems” approach to its control of Hong Kong.

The detentions have widely been seen as direct retaliation for Canada’s arrest in 2018 of Huawei scion and chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, who is facing extradition to the U.S. to be tried on fraud charges over her company’s dealings with Iran.

“In the final analysis, there’s so much common interest that we can pursue, and being able to unite folks who share our values and our interests, I think, continues to be important,” Blumenauer said.

“If we’re willing to listen to the critics, if we’re willing to refine the approach the same way we did with NAFTA 2.0, I think that that’s an important point of departure. The United States needs to be in that game.

“Ultimately, most of those countries welcome our partnership, if not our leadership.”