Under The Angsana Tree: TPP: Trump Pacific Palisades

Trump Pacific Partnership? New Zealand PM's idea to save TPP

John Key at the Apec summit it Lima: ‘Trump Pacific Partnership would be fine.’ Photograph: Rodrigo Buendia/AFP/Getty Images

The threatened TPP trade pact could be rebadged as the “Trump Pacific Partnership” to satisfy the US president-elect who has vowed to scrap it, New Zealand’s prime minister has said.

John Key suggested “cosmetic changes” to the Trans-Pacific Partnership so that the US could be kept on board under Donald Trump, who has attacked free trade deals.

“The Trump Pacific Partnership for instance, that’d be fine,” said Key, with a laugh, during Apec talks in Lima, Peru.

read more

TPP could be renamed 'Trump-Pacific Partnership' to save deal, New Zealand's PM says

John Key, seen here with US Secretary of State John Kerry has said the 12-nation deal may be saved by making some ‘cosmetic changes’ Getty

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) should be renamed the “Trump Pacific Partnership” to satisfy the US President-elect who promised to end the trade deal, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key has said.

Speaking to business leaders at the APEC summit in Lima, Mr Key suggested the 12-nation deal may be saved by making some “cosmetic changes” to make it more acceptable to Mr Trump.

“The Trump-Pacific Partnership for instance, that’d be fine,” he joked.

read more

A Trump Pacific Partnership

President Obama shakes hands with Vietnam President Tran Dai Quang. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

TO THE extent the divided American electorate can be said to agree on anything after Nov. 8, it would seem to be broad rejection of “trade deals” such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Both major-party candidates, Republican winner Donald Trump and Democratic loser Hillary Clinton — as well as her erstwhile primary opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — opposed it. Not surprisingly, the Senate will not take up the TPP in the lame-duck session.

Therefore, there was a certain pathos to President Obama’s valedictory performance at last weekend’s Asia-Pacific economic summit. With Mr. Trump, the most vehement protectionist to win the presidency in recent memory, preparing to take over at the White House on Jan. 20, Mr. Obama urged the region’s leaders not to give up on the TPP or the American presence in Asia that it would embody and perpetuate. Meanwhile, China’s strongman, Xi Jinping, offered membership in its alternative to the TPP, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a less ambitious tariff-cutting plan whose main impact would be to substitute Beijing for Washington as the Asia-Pacific region’s economic and, potentially, strategic heavyweight.

Abandoning the TPP would be a self-inflicted injury to the United States and its democratic partners, from the west coast of South America to Australia to Japan. Yet even as the various leaders of those nations declared themselves open to China’s blandishments, they refused to close the door on some new arrangement that might include the United States. New Zealand’s prime minister, John Key, observed that he would consider renaming the TPP the “Trump Pacific Partnership” if it would help bring the new American administration on board; while Mr. Key was obviously joking, his offer to reopen negotiations in search of a bargain that would meet with Washington’s approval seemed genuine enough. Surely no nation in this prosperous, strategically vital area of the world can relish its abandonment by the United States, after 70 years in which the area benefited from American investment, trade and military strength.

read more

Trump Vows To Back Out Of The Trans-Pacific Partnership, Effectively Killing It

Donald Trump plans to pull the U.S. out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership on his first day in office, putting the future of the sweeping trade deal in jeopardy.

He announced his plan to back out of the deal, which his presidential election opponent Hillary Clinton had also denounced, in a video message posted to Twitter.

The TPP was one of President Barack Obama’s most controversial foreign policy moves. The agreement aimed to promote free trade while putting pressure on countries faltering on human rights, but it was widely panned by green and labor rights groups. Critics say the deal favors major corporations and wouldn’t improve conditions for vulnerable workers in places like Vietnam and Malaysia.

read more

What is the Trans Pacific Partnership? Why is Donald Trump withdrawing from TPP?

President-elect Trump has laid out his policy plans for his first 100 days in office in a video posed to YouTube.

He called the treaty “a potential disaster for our country” and said that he would replace the deal with “fair bilateral trade deals that bring jobs and industry back onto American shores”.

Mr Trump has been a vocal critic of multi-national trade agreements such as TPP and the US-EU Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), claiming that the deals put business interests before American jobs.

read more

Trump says US to quit TPP on first day in office

President-elect Donald Trump says the US will quit the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal on his first day in the White House.

He made the announcement in a video message outlining what he intends to do first when he takes office in January.

The TPP trade deal was signed by 12 countries which together cover 40% of the world's economy.

read more

Trump to withdraw from Trans-Pacific Partnership on first day in office

Donald Trump has issued a video outlining his policy plans for his first 100 days in office and vowing to issue a note of intent to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership “from day one”.

In the brief clip posted to YouTube on Monday, the president-elect said that “our transition team is working very smoothly, efficiently, and effectively”, contradicting a wealth of media reports telling of chaos in Trump Tower as Trump struggles to build a team.

He said that he was going to issue a note of intent to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, calling it “a potential disaster for our country”. Instead he said he would “negotiate fair bilateral trade deals that bring jobs and industry back”.

read more

TPP: Angela Merkel 'not happy' about possible demise of Trans-Pacific trade deal

Angela Merkel has said she is "not happy" about the possible demise of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, which Donald Trump has said the US will pull out of on his first day in office.

Although she did not mention the President-elect directly, the German Chancellor called for nations to take a multilateral approach to solving global problems in a speech to the German Parliament on Wednesday.

Ms Merkel said: "I will tell you honestly: I am not happy that the trans-Pacific agreement now will probably not become reality. I don't know who will benefit from that."

read more

A potential disaster for our country’: Trump to pull out of Trans-Pacific deal on first day

President-elect Donald Trump vowed to start the U.S. withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, institute a five-year ban on federal officials lobbying after leaving government, and cancel “job-killing” regulations on energy production within his first 100 days in office.

Trump detailed executive actions he can take “on day one” — as soon as he is sworn in as president in January — in a video released Monday. He included a proposal that “for every one new regulation, two old regulations must be eliminated.”

Absent from the list were some of his most controversial plans, such as building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, repealing Obamacare, and undoing the nuclear deal with Iran.

read more

Why Trump is right, and wrong, about killing off the Trans-Pacific Partnership

President-elect Donald Trump is right: The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a damaging deal and deserves to be killed off.

But he tells a half truth about why the trade accord among a dozen Pacific Rim nations is a bad deal. In Trump’s view, trade agreements like NAFTA have allowed developing countries to “steal” American manufacturing jobs and decimate the well-waged middle class. This is why he says that America should reject the TPP.

But shifting the blame for American joblessness and stagnant incomes obscures the more complex, largely home-grown pressures that led U.S. companies to offshore manufacturing production to low-wage jurisdictions. Promising to tear up certain trade deals and impose tariffs on imports (chiefly from China and Mexico) will do very little if anything to reverse the problem.

read more

Robert Ayson: Trump's challenge to New Zealand foreign policy

Rudy Giuliani wants to be America's next secretary of state

The international community is still reeling from Donald Trump's election victory. It will take some time for the state of shock to disperse. The natural response is a foreign policy of denial.

Part one of that delusion is to remind ourselves how good New Zealand's relations with the United States have become. That was what we were told when John Kerry was still in town. But that's of precious little comfort in a more troubled world that a Trump presidency will bring.

Part two is to pretend that points can still be scored while the Obama Administration still holds the formal trappings of power. An example is Foreign Minister Murray McCully's quest for a Security Council Resolution on the broken peace process

read more

Donald Trump has announced the US will withdraw from the TPP

DONALD Trump has announced his intention to withdraw the United States from a Trans-Pacific Partnership deal.

In a video declaration, the President-elect vowed to implement this from his first day in office on January 20. “On trade, I am going to issue our notification of intent to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a potential disaster for our country,” he said.

“Instead, we will negotiate fair, bilateral trade deals that bring jobs and industry back onto American shores.” Instead, Mr Trump, who had long flagged he would dump the TPP, said he would pursue “fair” bilateral trade agreements.

read more

Trump trumps trade talks: TPP to go on day one

President-elect Donald Trump says the US will quit the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal on his first day in the White House.

He made the announcement in a video message outlining what he intends to do first when he takes office in January.

The TPP trade deal was signed by 12 countries which together cover 40% of the world's economy.

read more

What Will Fill The Void If Trump Kills TPP?

President-elect Donald Trump promised to destroy President Barack Obama’s legacy trade deal, leaving a void in Asia likely to be filled by a rising China.

Trump wants to tear up the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a 12-country trade pact he called “a potential disaster for our country,” on his first day in office.

“This is very depressing news. It means the end of US leadership on trade and the passing of the baton,” Executive Director of the Asian Trade Centre Deborah Elms told the BBC.

read more

Trump Likens Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Deal to Rape

Donald Trump continued blasting the Trans-Pacific Partnership on Tuesday, likening it in an evening speech to “rape.”

“It's a rape of our country. It's a harsh word, but that's what it is -- rape of our country,” Trump said at an evening rally in St. Clairsville, Ohio.

Earlier in the day, in a trade speech at a Pennsylvania scrap facility, Trump called on the U.S. to follow the political wave that began with the U.K.’s decision to leave the European Union.

read more

'America first': Trump promises to dump TPP in first 100 days

A video of President-elect Donald Trump laying out “a list of executive actions we can take on day one” covers international trade, domestic energy production, homeland defense, immigration and ethics reforms.

Assuring the American people that his White House transition team’s work is going “very smoothly, efficiently and effectively,” President-elect Trump gave an update via video on emerging policy proposals under the next administration.

“A simple core principle, putting America first,” would be at the center of each agenda item, Trump said, “to restore our laws and bring back our jobs.” “It's about time,” he added.

read more

TPP: Trump Pacific Partnership?

NEW Zealand Prime Minister John Key was jesting when he suggested replacing the word “trans” in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with Trump. Still, it reflects a certain frustration over how a Trump presidency in the United States could undo years of hard labour, to put together what is the world’s most expansive trade agreement. He said this during the Apec meeting in Lima, Peru over the weekend, where leaders pledged to ratify the agreement – with or without the US.

Just what a TPP without the US would mean wasn’t made clear, as both the US and Japan would have to sign up for the pact to work. Japan, as well as Singapore, is anxious to get TPP on the road.

Other options: re-negotiate the pact completely or, as Mr Key suggested, make “cosmetic changes” so Mr Trump, who is anti-TPP, can present it as a better deal. You wonder if his quip would attract a Twitter response from Mr Trump, who is now busy picking his Cabinet members – and castigating members of a cast of a Broadway musical whom he said humiliated vice-president-elect Mike Pence who was in the audience. Through Twitter of course.

read more

Trump deals fatal death blow to TPP – Promises to quit trade deal on day one of presidency

The American President-Elect Donald Trump, in a televised national address, has dealt a death blow to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). He said that he was going to issue a note of intent to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, calling it “a potential disaster for our country”. Instead he said he would “negotiate fair bilateral trade deals that bring jobs and industry back”.

Trump’s announcement has dealt a certain death blow to the hopes of several APEC leaders who had expressed hopes that Trump would revisit his tough rhetoric against the trade pace in the lead up to the American elections.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong had earlier said that his government will ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) early next year to maintain momentum on the pact and demonstrate that TPP benefits all 12 member countries – including the United States of America (US).

read more

US President-Elect confirms withdrawal from Trans-Pacific Partnership

US President-Elect, Donald Trump revealed his policy plan today (22 Nov) on the first one hundred days for as the incoming 45th President of United States of America.

A video on the US Presidential Transition Facebook page, showed Trump saying that his agenda will be based on ‘putting America first’. “A list of executive action we can take on day one to restore our lost and bring back our jobs,” Trump said.

Trump in his video, states what he is going to do once he enters the White House. Things that he will do:

Withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), of what he said ‘a potential disaster for America’. America will instead negotiate fair bilateral trade deals that will bring jobs and industry back onto the country shores.
Cancel job-killing restrictions on the production of American energy.
Formulate a rule that for every one new rule, two old regulations must be eliminated.
For national security, Trump will ask the Department of Defense to develop a comprehensive plan to protect America’s vital infrastructure from cyber attacks and all other form of attacks.
Direct the Department of Labour to investigate all abuses of visa programs that undercut the American worker.
On Ethics Reform, impose a five-year ban on lobbying on executive officials becoming lobbyists after they leave the administration and a life-time ban for executive officials lobbying for foreign government.

read more

Why is Donald Trump against the TPP trade deal?

Donald Trump is not in office yet. But he's already announced what he will do on his first day in the White House, withdraw the US from the long-awaited Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.

This was one of the main pledges he made during this year's bitterly fought presidential campaign. The deal brings together some of the world's biggest economies, in the hopes of creating a single market.

But what happens if the US pulls out? Is he rewriting global trade rules? And is it a sign of increasing protectionism?

read more

Donald Trump confirms TPP to be dumped, visa program probed

United States president-elect Donald Trump has released a statement outlining the things he plans to do in his first 100 days in office, three of which will impact the technology industries.

In the video, Trump re-states his policy to create a new cyber-defence plan for America.

“I will ask the Department of Defence and the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to develop a comprehensive plan to defend America's infrastructure from cyber attacks and all other form of attacks.” The Department of Defence's Cyber Strategy already lists “Defend the U.S. homeland and U.S. national interests against cyberattacks of significant consequence” as one of its three missions, so it is unclear exactly what new plans Trump expects.

read more

Donald Trump TPP retreat an invitation for Chinese to step in

Trade boffins like nothing better than an acronym and the grand plan was to merge the TPP with the RCEP to create a genuine Asian and Pacific trade zone, but now RCEP looms large. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership is China’s response to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and brings India and South Korea to the table to create a genuine ASEAN and Asian trade agreement.

Geopolitically it is also important because it is China’s deal and TPP deliberately left China out of the US-led deal.

Just how talks transpire remains to be seen, but Australia would be as keen to get involved in the RCEP as it was in the TPP because both serve as great platforms for future deals.

read more

Trump sinks Asia trade pact, opening the way for China to lead

An ambitious Asia-Pacific trade pact linking the United States and 11 countries lay in tatters on Tuesday after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said he would kill the deal on his first day in office on Jan. 20.

Trump's statement appeared to open the way for China to assume the United States' leadership mantle on trade and diplomacy in Asia. The Republican termed the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) "a potential disaster for our country."

China, Japan and South Korea are already in the initial stages of discussing a trilateral trade deal, and Beijing has been pushing its own limited Asian regional trade pact that excludes Washington for the past five years.

read more

Chinese officials are 'licking their lips' at Trump's decision to kill the TPP

Beijing is more than pleased about Donald Trump turning his back on a major U.S.-led Pacific trade pact.

Ian Bremmer, president of the global intelligence firm Eurasia Group and a closely watched political scientist, said Wednesday that officials in China are excited about President-elect Trump's plan to withdraw from U.S. participation in the planned Trans-Pacific Partnership. The proposed free-trade bloc would have included 12 countries accounting for more than a third of global trade.

President Barack Obama and others had argued that the TPP deal was a way for the United States to continue to assert its leadership — especially in the face of an increasingly powerful China that is eager to replace the U.S. as the main power in the region. Trump's apparent killing of the TPP creates a geopolitical vacuum in the eyes of both Beijing and American allies, Bremmer said.

read more

Here's What China Plans to Do as Donald Trump Snubs the TPP

The President-elect has called the trade agreement “a potential disaster for our country.”

China will “play its role” in promoting economic integration in the Asia-Pacific, the foreign ministry said on Wednesday, after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said he would kill an ambitious regional trade pact.

Trump’s statement appeared to open the way for China to assume the United States’ leadership mantle on trade and diplomacy in Asia. The Republican termed the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) “a potential disaster for our country.”

China, Japan and South Korea are already in the initial stages of discussing a trilateral trade deal, and Beijing has been pushing its own limited Asian regional trade pact that excludes Washington for the past five years.

read more

Congratulations, Trump. Welcome to hell

Dear Mr. Trump

You won. Welcome to hell.

And to think, I thought you’d become president when hell froze over.

Now that the election is finally behind us, may I ask a tiny question: Why did you want this job? Was it on your bucket list? After so many square miles of golf courses, trophy wives, gilt mirrors and crystal chandeliers, was there nothing left to mess with?

read more

Full Coverage:

26/11/2016

TPP: Trump Pacific Palisades