Trump changes mind on Pacific trade deal
After pulling U.S. out of Trans-Pacific Partnership, he now considers rejoining
President Trump, in a surprising reversal, says he is directing his advisers to look into rejoining the trade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a deal he pulled out of within days of assuming the presidency.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump, in a sharp reversal, told a gathering of farm state lawmakers and governors Thursday that the United States was looking into rejoining a multicountry trade agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a deal he pulled out of days after assuming the presidency.
Trump’s reconsideration of an agreement he once denounced as a “rape of our country” caught even his closest advisers by surprise and came as his administration faces stiff pushback from Republican lawmakers, farmers and other businesses concerned that the president’s threat of tariffs and other trade barriers will hurt them economically.
Larry Kudlow, Trump’s top economic adviser, said that the request to revisit the deal was somewhat spontaneous. “This whole trade thing has exploded,” Kudlow said. “There’s no deadline. We’ll pull a team together,
but we haven’t even done — I mean, it just happened a couple hours ago.”
In another development, the Wall Street Journal reported that sources said the White House is planning to ratchet up the pressure on China by focusing on new tariffs and threatening to block Chinese technology investment in the U.S.
Trump’s decision to throw out the TPP and his pledge to tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement were bedrock promises of his populist campaign, which centered heavily on unfair trade practices that he said had robbed U.S. workers.
But, as he often does, the president started to change gears after hearing complaints from important constituents — in this case, Republican lawmakers who said farmers and other businesses in their states would suffer from his trade approach since they send many of their products abroad.
At the White House meeting Thursday, Sen. John Thune, RS.D., questioned Trump about returning to the pact, arguing that the TPP was the best way to put pressure on China.
Trump, who has put China’s “unfair” trade practices in his crosshairs, turned to Kudlow and Robert Lighthizer, his trade negotiator, and asked them to look into re-entering the agreement.
Rejoining the pact could be a significant change in fortune for many U.S. industries that stood to benefit from the trade accord and for Republican lawmakers who supported it. The deal, which was negotiated by the Obama administration, was largely intended as a tool to prod China into making the type of economic changes that the United States and others have long wanted. Many economists say the best way to combat a rising China and pressure it to open its market is through multilateral trade deals like the TPP, which create favorable trading terms for participants.
But rejoining it could be a complex task. The remaining countries, like Japan, moved ahead without the United States, and spent months renegotiating the pact before finally agreeing to a sweeping multinational deal this year. Trump, who has demanded that any such deal benefit the United States, is unlikely to rejoin the TPP without further concessions for what he has criticized as a terrible agreement. That could complicate talks, since Japan maintains that it has already given all the concessions it could.
It is also unclear how serious Trump is about rejoining. In the past, the president has floated policies that appeared to run counter to his earlier positions, such as cooperating with Democrats on legislation governing immigration and gun rights, then quickly abandoned them.
“What he tells people in a room to make them happy does not always translate into administration policy,” said Phil Levy, a senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
In a statement, a deputy White House press secretary, Lindsay Walters, pushed back on the notion that Trump was reversing his promises. The president had “kept his promise to end the TPP deal negotiated by the Obama administration because it was unfair to American workers and farmers,” she said. “The president has consistently said he would be open to a substantially better deal.”