The Trade Deal We Just Threw Overboard

[fun n serious]

Nationalist on the left and Right hate trade deals. They say " fair trade" but they mean no trade.


To Obama administration officials and other free-trade advocates, this feels like a gaping self-inflicted wound, a voluntary surrender of economic and geopolitical territory captured through countless hours of intense negotiations in drab conference rooms. When I asked Obama’s trade representative, Michael Froman, what his negotiating team had given up to Mexico and Canada in exchange for their TPP concessions to America, he replied: “Nothing!” Mexico and Canada were willing to play ball because TPP would give them better access to sell their products in Asian markets—and when Trump tries to renegotiate NAFTA, he won’t be able to offer that carrot now that he’s ditched TPP.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/trump-tpp-free-trade-deal-obama-renegotiate-nafta-214874

[Hoyt]

1. Trump has screwed us, but Democrats would have likely pushed Clinton to similar action

had she won.

[zipplewrath]

3. Obama would have tried

If she had won, Obama would have tried in the lame duck, and he may have succeeded. There were enough folks on both sides of the aisle to potentially pass it.

[zipplewrath]

2. Wrong

Nationalist on the left and Right hate trade deals. They say " fair trade" but they mean no trade.

Wrong. You don't hear alot of complaint about trade with Ireland, or Italy, or France. BMW's are very popular. The opponents have a long list of issues with trade deals, most of them having to do with a "race to the bottom" in everything from labor to the environment.