[Igor Antunov]

Day 1:

President Donald Trump signed an executive order formally withdrawing the United States from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal on Monday, following through on a promise from his campaign last year.

In an Oval Office ceremony, Trump also signed an order imposing a federal hiring freeze and a directive banning U.S. non-governmental organizations receive federal funding from providing abortions abroad.

Trump called the TPP order a "great thing for the American worker."

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-t ... SKBN1572AF

Wait, in the US private firms receive tax payer funding to provide abortion services? Eww. Baby parts trade. Nice to see that gone.

[Ter]

Without getting into the merits of these actions, we can say that he is doing what he promised to do.

So if ever a Democrat President is elected, he/she can undo/redo all if that in one day? Even the TPP trade deal ?

[MistyTiger]

So he was just sitting on that executive order for days and just pulled it out of his sleeve and signed it yesterday? Awful.

[blackjack21]

Awesome, and he's taking aim at NAFTA now.

[Igor Antunov]

So if ever a Democrat President is elected, he/she can undo/redo all if that in one day? Even the TPP trade deal ?

TPP? No. It just died in its crib. Need to be at the right time and place to do what he just did. Opportune timing.

[The Immortal Goon]

To nobody's surprise, I more or less piss along Marx's lines on this issue in the main, in one of his rare instances of accelerationism:

If the free-traders cannot understand how one nation can grow rich at the expense of another, we need not wonder, since these same gentlemen also refuse to understand how within one country one class can enrich itself at the expense of another.

Do not imagine, gentlemen, that in criticizing freedom of trade we have the least intention of defending the system of protection.

One may declare oneself an enemy of the constitutional regime without declaring oneself a friend of the ancient regime.

Moreover, the protectionist system is nothing but a means of establishing large-scale industry in any given country, that is to say, of making it dependent upon the world market, and from the moment that dependence upon the world market is established, there is already more or less dependence upon free trade. Besides this, the protective system helps to develop free trade competition within a country. Hence we see that in countries where the bourgeoisie is beginning to make itself felt as a class, in Germany for example, it makes great efforts to obtain protective duties. They serve the bourgeoisie as weapons against feudalism and absolute government, as a means for the concentration of its own powers and for the realization of free trade within the same country.

But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade.

Which might put me reluctantly on the TPP side, but I'm also kind of happy that Vietnam and China are, by most accounts in the region (1, 2, 3) going to get tighter as zones of influence without the US having any business in interfering. They're hardly model socialist states (the phrase even being a contradiction), but ceding the Pacific to China is certainly fine by me.

But, then again, this is all very silly when we're fighting over a type of capitalism that's been occurring since the 19th century and pretending that we're reinventing a wheel at any point in this late stage capitalism.

So I remain an agnostic.

[noemon]

Though different from the TPP, the TTIP deal has been declared dead by Europe long before Trump:

Is it over? Can it be true? If so, it’s a victory for a campaign that once looked hopeless, pitched against a fortress of political, corporate and bureaucratic power.

TTIP – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – appears to be dead. The German economy minister, Sigmar Gabriel, says that “the talks with the United States have de facto failed”. The French prime minister, Manuel Valls, has announced “a clear halt”. Belgian and Austrian ministers have said the same thing. People power wins. For now.

But the lobbyists who demanded this charter for corporate rights never give up. TTIP has been booed off the stage but another treaty, whose probable impacts are almost identical, is waiting in the wings. And this one is more advanced, wanting only final approval. If this happens before Britain leaves the EU, we are likely to be stuck with it for 20 years.

The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (Ceta) is ostensibly a deal between the EU and Canada. You might ask what harm Canada could do us. But it allows any corporation that operates there, wherever its headquarters might be, to sue governments before an international tribunal. It threatens to tear down laws protecting us from exploitation and prevent parliaments on both sides of the Atlantic from legislating.

To say that there is no mandate for such agreements is an understatement: they have received an unequivocal counter-mandate. The consultation the EU grudgingly launched on TTIP’s proposal to grant new legal rights to corporations received 150,000 responses, 97% of which were hostile. But while choice is permitted when you shop for butter, on the big decisions there is no alternative.

It’s not clear whether national parliaments will be allowed to veto this treaty. The European trade commissioner has argued that there is no need: it can be put before the European parliament alone. But even if national parliaments are allowed to debate it, they will be permitted only to take it or leave it. The contents are deemed to have been settled already.

Only once the negotiations between European and Canadian officials had been completed, and the text of the agreement leaked, did the European commission publish it. It is 1,600 pages long. It has neither a contents list nor explanatory text. As far as transparency, parity and comprehensibility are concerned, it’s the equivalent of the land treaties illiterate African chiefs were induced to sign in the 19th century. It is hard to see how parliamentarians could make a properly informed decision.

If you seek to buy a secondhand car these days, the salesperson might wheedle and spin, but they will also – thanks to EU consumer protection laws – be obliged to explain the risks and caveats. If you want to know whether or not to buy this trade treaty, you have no such protection. The EU’s website tells you what a wonderful set of wheels this is but carries not a word about the risks.

Here is its answer to the question of whether the Ceta negotiations were conducted in secret. “Not at all ... During the five years of talks, the commission held various civil society dialogue meetings for stakeholders.” I followed the link it gave and found that four meetings had taken place, all of them in Brussels, all dominated by corporate trade associations, which are likely to have been on the inside track anyway. Where was the publicity? Where were the attempts to reach beyond a gilded circle of lobbyists and cronies? Where were the efforts to take the discussion to other nations? Where were the debates, the drive to seek genuine public engagement, let alone consent? If this is transparency, I dread to think what secrecy looks like.

After long hours struggling with the treaty, I realised I hadn’t a hope of grasping its implications. I have had to rely on experts commissioned by groups such as Attac in Germany and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Like TTIP, Ceta threatens to lock in privatisation, making renationalisation (of Britain’s railways, say) or attempts by cities to take control of failing public services (as Joseph Chamberlain did in Birmingham in the 19th century, laying the foundations for modern social provision) impossible. Like TTIP, it uses a broad definition of both investment and expropriation to allow corporations to sue governments when they believe their “future anticipated profits” might be threatened by new laws.

Like TTIP, it restricts the ways in which governments may protect their people. It appears to prohibit, for example, rules that would prevent banks from becoming too big to fail. It seems to threaten our planning laws and other commonsense protections.

Anything not specifically exempted from the agreement is considered covered. In other words, if governments do not spot a potential hazard before the hazard emerges, they are stuck with it. The EU appears to have relinquished its ability, for example, to insist that investment and retail banking be separated.

Ceta claims to be a trade treaty, but many of its provisions have little to do with trade. They are attempts to circumscribe democracy on behalf of corporate power. Millions of people in Europe and Canada want to emerge from the neoliberal era. But such treaties would lock us into it, allowing the politics we have rejected to govern us beyond the grave.

If parliaments reject this treaty, another deal is being prepared: the Trade in Services Agreement, which the EU is simultaneously negotiating with the US and 21 other nations. Theresa May’s government has expressed enthusiasm: her Department for International Trade says: “The UK remains committed to an ambitious Trade in Services Agreement.” So much for taking back control.

Corporate lobbyists and their captive governments have been seeking to impose such treaties for more than 20 years, starting with the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (it was destroyed, like TTIP, by massive public protests, in 1998). Working in secrecy, without democratic consent, they will keep returning to the theme, in the hope of wearing down our resistance.

When you are told that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, this is what it means. This struggle will continue throughout your life. We have to succeed every time; they have to succeed only once. Never drop your guard. Never let them win.

As soon as those leaks came out showing how ridiculously pro-American the draft of the deal was, Europeans declared it impassable.

[ThirdTerm]

Australia is leading a push to salvage a Pacific trade deal after President Trump formally withdrew as a signatory to the 12-nation accord. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) already exists for the purpose of Asian countries' economic integration and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) may be Australia's desperate attempt to be a part of Asia after rejecting it for a century, which does not benefit any Asian countries, let alone the US.

[AFAIK]

Now we need to kill CETA.
Email your MEPs today.
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/search.html

[Vyth]

Looks like he is already following through with his promises.

This seems to contradict what the mainstream media had been reporting just a few weeks ago.

Why would the news lie to me?

[Atlantis]

This will be a great boost to China's influence in the region. Chinese diplomats will be able to pick up the scattered pieces of Trump's all-round massacre at their leisure. I wonder whether the Trumpists are so dumb that they don't understand this, or whether they honestly believe in that the great deal-maker will in the end get a better deal by screwing one country at a time?

The underlying reasoning is clear. Trump believes that he can exert greater power if he can deal with one country at a time. That's also why he wants to destroy the EU. Dealing with each European country individually would be far more advantageous to the US than dealing with the EU.

My feeling is that Trump's Mafia-style deal making won't work too well in the field of diplomacy, where long-standing alliances and mutual agreements have nit a tight net of inter-dependencies. He acts like the proverbial elephant in the porcelain shop.

The German vice chancellor and minister for the economy already considers reorienting the country's economic policy towards the East:

German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said after Friday’s inaugaration that Germany might need a new economic strategy geared towards Asia if the US government imposes protectionist policies.

The Independent

[One Degree]

This will be a great boost to China's influence in the region. Chinese diplomats will be able to pick up the scattered pieces of Trump's all-round massacre at their leisure. I wonder whether the Trumpists are so dumb that they don't understand this, or whether they honestly believe in that the great deal-maker will in the end get a better deal by screwing one country at a time?

Or, you can see it as accepting we have all ready lost the battle in the East and it is senseless to keep throwing money and political currency at a lost cause and need to have a different strategy. When faced with defeat, the best option is to withdraw your forces, regroup, and then attack from a new direction.

[Beren]

Trump may truly believe that global trade has to be rearranged to benefit the US which has a tremendous trade deficit. He may also truly believe the current path is unsustainable. However, the frameworks of a China-centered trade-system have already been settled in Eurasia.

[Atlantis]

Or, you can see it as accepting we have all ready lost the battle in the East and it is senseless to keep throwing money and political currency at a lost cause and need to have a different strategy. When faced with defeat, the best option is to withdraw your forces, regroup, and then attack from a new direction.

Where in Trump's announcements do you see anything about "defeat"? Make America great again doesn't sound defeatist to me.

The US can't compete economically on a level playing field. How can Trump tilt the playing field in his favor? The only way I can think of is military aggression. If that's the case, Europe should be so grateful if the Trump factor leads to a weakening of trans-Atlantic ties.

the US which has a tremendous trade deficit

That's the popular narrative used to squeeze more profits out of its vassals. The US trade deficit of 40 odd billions is nothing in comparison to the 3 to 5 trillions of profits stored by US-based multinationals in off-shore tax havens. Trump could close down the tax-havens with a stroke of the pen. But the profits of his palls are sacrosanct. And nobody as smart as he should have to pay taxes anyways. So somebody else has to bleed for America.

[One Degree]

Where in Trump's announcements do you see anything about "defeat"? Make America great again doesn't sound defeatist to me.

You do not propose isolationist policies if you believe you are winning abroad.

[Atlantis]

You do not propose isolationist policies if you believe you are winning abroad.

Why would he propose an isolationist policy? He isn't going to prevent Google, Apple, MS, Visa, etc., providing their services abroad, is he? And trade always has to be a two-way street.

[One Degree]

Why would he propose an isolationist policy? He isn't going to prevent Google, Apple, MS, Visa, etc., providing their services abroad, is he? And trade always has to be a two-way street.

You can be a political isolationist without being a trade isolationist. His proposed tariffs on imported goods however shows a willingness to become a trade isolationist if necessary as a temporary bargaining chip. My guess is he believes destroying the current trade structure will allow him to create a more positive one for the US. The problem is he is playing big boy games without enough home support. His policies could be very beneficial for the US, but will probably be undermined by the unwillingness of others to make any short term sacrifice for a long term gain. The entire problem in the US is everyone being too shortsighted. No one cares about long term views.

[Atlantis]

My guess is he believes destroying the current trade structure will allow him to create a more positive one for the US.

The "current trade structure" has been built by numerous wars and sustained political pressure applied by Washington on allied an non-allied nations alike. It can't get more advantageous for the US, certainly not with a bully like Trump.

The US's problems are domestic. No matter how much pressure you apply on other countries, it's not going to solve domestic problems.

[Beren]

Europe should be so grateful if the Trump factor leads to a weakening of trans-Atlantic ties.

Trans-Atlantic ties seem to be over their apex.

Trump could close down the tax-havens with a stroke of the pen.

We'll see if he's going to do something about it, however, it shouldn't be surprising if most Americans found that free trade as it is today is bad for them. As the centre of the global economy shifts and the US becomes a periphery like Europe and Japan are, they will have to switch from the consumption-driven to the export-driven model, so they won't be able to afford such trade deficits anymore. Trump could be a great president if he could prepare the US for the new era, however, in my opinion he will only ruin its trade relations without replacing them with better ones. And we haven't even started discussing his domestic economic policies yet.

[One Degree]

The "current trade structure" has been built by numerous wars and sustained political pressure applied by Washington on allied an non-allied nations alike. It can't get more advantageous for the US, certainly not with a bully like Trump.

I agree, yet we have failed to cash in on this for long term rewards due to domestic short term changes in policy, and simple stupidity.

The US's problems are domestic. No matter how much pressure you apply on other countries, it's not going to solve domestic problems.

I again agree. The reason I say we have lost in the East is because of Americans being incapable of taking a longer term view. This makes it impossible for us to compete against China which only takes a long range view. They won before the war ever started. We need to acknowledge this and regroup and try to get Americans thinking logically and long term.