Now there are reports that Trump may be moving to weasel back into the Trans Pacific Partnership, the TPP. Trump's first act as president was to withdraw the US from the TPP. The Gullibillies were so delirious with joy that they started burning books other than the Koran.
According to Foreign Policy, Trump's minions are beginning to float the idea about signing on to the TPP again but, this time, Washington might find that door closed.
Earlier this month, speaking in Chile, Mnuchin said Washington would “definitely” be open to rejoining the pact — once all the administration’s other trade deals were taken care of, and provided the trade accord could be rewritten to be more beneficial to the United States. (U.S. trade officials declined to say what those revised conditions might be.)
And Larry ["Wrong Way"] Kudlow, a former television commentator who was named Trump’s top economic adviser, said this month that the United States could lead a “trade coalition of the willing” to counter China’s trade heft and abuses — almost the very definition of the TPP that Trump walked away from early in his presidency.
But that ship seems to have sailed. The remaining 11 countries from the original TPP signed a slightly slimmed-down version of the accord earlier this month in Chile, suspending a score of controversial provisions that the United States had insisted upon. Member countries are already in the process of ratifying the deal, which could go into effect early next year.
“Is there a chance in hell anyone wants to reopen the thing to get the U.S. back in? Not under a Trump administration,” says Mike Callaghan, a former Australian Treasury official and economic advisor to the prime minister, now at the Lowy Institute, a Sydney-based think tank.
If the "campaign tRump" had somehow survived the inauguration ....
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, yet another nominee for "Person(s) Most Responsible for tRump contest"!
"Alexander Nix, the arrogant boss of CA, who claimed total credit for Donald Trump’s victory, especially the 40,000 votes that clinched it, is merely a salesman who’ll claim anything for his product. If you know salesmen (I come from a long line) that’s what they do. He’s not a tech genius who programs the villainy, he just hustles it. On Channel 4’s hidden camera, where he boasted about their triumphs, he was trying to snare what he believed were corrupt clients from Sri Lanka. He pulled out the stops."
as always the wise Salutin nails it. More:
"But I tend to see the horrors of manipulation as less striking than the signs of human ability to act independently anyway. How else do you explain unexpected events like Bernie Sanders’ surge? He didn’t just surge, he nearly won."
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2018/03/29/resistance-isnt-futile-despite-facebook-and-cambridge-analytica.html
That's why this (for example) "Bernie is a Russian tool" talk is sooo dangerous.
A current CDN equivalent would be smearing your beloved Greens as Russian tools cause - hey they used Aggregate IQ.
Here's the thing, the Trans Pacific Partnership is a bad deal. Not sure why Junior likes it, but it was the only reason I thought that "hey, Trump will be a shit show except for this"... I was wrong it would seem.
ReplyDelete@anon 12.17
ReplyDeleteRemember how Harper rushed through a not so good softwood lumber deal?
It was to show Canada just how good a negotiator he ,thought, he was.
I'm guessing Trudeau is not so different.
TB
Nothing will piss off Trump’s base outside of Trump suddenly becoming welcoming to immigrants or respectful of women and minorities. They love him because he speaks to their rage at being left behind by capital mobility and the vulnerability they feel as the privileges they grew up with are being eroded and taken away by those ungrateful untermenschen demanding equal treatment and the like. And he does it with a bullhorn rather than the dog whistles they’ve been primed with for decades. His actual policies matter not in the least.
ReplyDeleteWell, not to his base. There are more than enough people on the margins who aren’t his base that his policy choices do still matter enough to make an issue out of them, but don’t ever expect them to change the minds of the people who still adore him.