Trump changes course, now says he doesn’t want to rejoin Pacific trade pact
‘Too many contingencies,’ he tweets
The New York Times
WASHINGTON — After publicly flirting last week with having the United States rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership, President Donald Trump appeared to rebuff the idea once and for all late Tuesday.
In a Twitter post at 10:49 p.m., Mr. Trump said that although Japan and South Korea would like the United States to join the 11 other nations in the multilateral trade agreement, he had no intention of doing so. The decision put an apparent end to a meandering trade policy in which Mr. Trump pulled out of the deal in his first week in office, before suggesting last week that he was having second thoughts.
“Too many contingencies and no way to get out if it doesn’t work,” Mr. Trump wrote from his Mara-Lago club in Florida. “Bilateral deals are far more efficient, profitable and better for OUR workers.”
The comments confounded some trade experts on Tuesday night because South Korea is not in the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Mr. Trump followed up with a shot at the World Trade Organization, which he said was “bad” to the United States.
The declaration comes as Mr. Trump has been in discussions with South Korea about peace talks with North Korea and as the president hosts Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan at Mar-a-Lago, where they are expected to discuss trade, among other issues.
When Mr. Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership last year, he proposed a bilateral trade deal with Japan in its place. But Japan’s deputy prime minister, Taro Aso, ruled out that possibility in March, saying that such a negotiation would lead to pain for Japan.
Instead, Japan forged ahead with a deal among the accord’s 11 remaining members, which they reached last month. Japan maintains that this agreement is still fragile, and that negotiating another pact with the United States could put its success at risk.
Japan has said it would be willing to enter a one-onone deal only if it would serve as a bridge to the U.S. re-entering the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Other countries have also been cool to the idea of giving ground to the U.S. after they spent months reworking the deal after Mr. Trump withdrew.
In recent weeks, Mr. Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs on global imports of steel and aluminum, only to announce exceptions for several American allies. He also announced stiff tariffs on up to $150 billion worth of Chinese imports, before his economic advisers suggested that this might have been a negotiating tactic.
After striking a bilateral trade agreement with South Korea last month, Mr. Trump suggested that he might hold out for a better deal down the road.
And Mr. Trump regularly muses about ending the North American Free Trade Agreement, even as his advisers say that negotiations with Canada and Mexico are proceeding in a positive direction.