Trump said to consider rejoining TPP
As trade conflict with China escalates, president appears to change mind
WASHINGTON— U.S. President Donald Trump told top administration officials Thursday to look at rejoining the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the multination trade agreement he pulled the United States out of shortly after taking office.
Rejoining the pact would be a major reversal as Trump escalates a trade conflict with China. The Pacific Rim trade deal was intended by the Obama administration as a way to counter China’s influence, but Trump criticized the pact as a candidate and pulled the United States out of the pact in early 2017.
Trump gave the new orders to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow during a meeting with lawmakers and governors on trade issues, according to two Republican senators in attendance.
Sen. John Thune said that he and others at the table raised the point that “if you really want to get China’s attention, one way to do it is start doing business with all the people they’re doing business with in the region: their competitors.”
Trump then told Lighthizer and Kudlow to “take a look at getting us back into that agree- ment, on our terms of course,” Thune said. “He was very I would say bullish about that.”
Sen. Ben Sasse also confirmed Trump’s surprise move.
“We should be leading TPP,” Sasse said. “China is a bunch of cheaters and the best way to push back on their cheating would be to be leading all these other rule-of-law nations in the Pacific that would rather be aligned with the U.S. than with China.”
Engaging in talks to re-enter the TPP would be part of a broader White House strategy to respond to an escalating trade flap between Trump and Beijing. Trump is looking for ways to crack down on what he believes are unfair trade practices in China, but he is having a hard time rallying other coun- tries to backstop his push to impose new tariffs or raise the costs of exports and imports for China.
The president is also running into strong pushback from Republican lawmakers, particularly those representing agricultural regions where China’s threatened retaliation against U.S. exports would hit hard.
The TPP is a trade agreement the United States, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Vietnam, Singapore, Australia, and a number of other countries signed in early 2016, which was meant to strengthen economic ties between the countries and give them more leverage in dealing with China.
The agreement never went into effect, however, because Trump withdrew from it three days after he was sworn in. The remaining countries ratified a version of the TPP without the United States earlier this year.
Trump has never fully articulated what he opposed about the TPP, but he has shown a general reluctance to enter into multilateral trade deals because he believes they allow the United States to be ripped off.
Trump was not the only one to oppose TPP during the campaign.
His Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, also said she did not plan on ratifying the deal, even after she had a role in its formation during her time as president Barack Obama’s Secretary of State.
Before Trump’s election, efforts to ratify the deal had stalled in Congress.