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Obama Administration Gives Up on Pacific Trade Deal
- clarkmoody 10y agoYou don't need 3000 pages of legalese written by corporate lobbyists to have a trade agreement. Instead, you need to declare unilateral free trade with a single sentence: We hereby impose no tariffs, quotas, or restrictions on goods imported from _____. Yes, free trade hurts some jobs at home. Yes, they may never come back. But for the vast majority, their standard of living goes up with the reduced cost of imported goods.
- twblalock 10y agoLife is not nearly that simple. First of all, there is rarely a good reason to accept unrestricted imports from another country unless that country also allows unrestricted imports from you -- and even then, it might not be a good idea. Second, trade doesn't just "happen" -- it's not like someone shows up with a boat full of shipping containers and the port unloads it and starts selling the stuff to passers-by out of a booth in the parking lot. There are tons of safety regulations, customs laws, retail distribution agreements, etc. that need to be negotiated before it is legal to bring stuff from one country into another. That often requires coordination between governments to make sure their laws are compatible, applications get sent to the right departments and actually get processed, inspectors are hired and sent to the ports, etc. So, before any corporate lobbying is involved or anyone even mentions copyright and IP law, a trade agreement is already extremely complex.
- mc32 10y agoNeither here nor there now, but would Obama or was Obama planning on giving up on it regardless of winner? If so, why wait till after election results? Why not undercut one of Trump's platform items before the elections?
- user837387 10y agoSo I read these comments in the Wall Street Journal and wanted to repeat them here. I was pretty depressed but David Van Wie's attitude has uplifted me and I believe that I will follow his example. I'm the opposition now. >>>David Van Wie: “It’s different now,” he said You better believe it is. Now, Mr President-elect, you are entrusted with the hopes and dreams of 60 million people who made you president of all 320 million Americans. In spite of everything they knew about your shortcomings and character flaws, they still chose you. You made many, many extravagant promises, Mr. President-elect. Lots of people were paying attention and now expect that the amazing people you appoint to replace the incompetent idiots there before will stand and deliver for the country. You talked a good game, and now you need to put up your best stuff under a white hot spotlight. More people voted for your opponent. Remember that when you say, "I won" as if you came into town with the wind at your back instead of through the mysteries of the Electoral College. It ain't bragging if you got it. Do you got it? Time will tell. The job requires absorbing constant criticism 24 hours a day for 1,500 days in a row, unless you are reelected. Then you can have 1,500 more days of unrelenting criticism. The rap on you is that you can't take criticism at all. Show us what you've really got! Show the world that you are better than your critics think you are. >>>>Gustavo Luzardo @David Van Wie At some point you have got to let it go man... take a deep breath, calm down, and enjoy the ride... ONLY in the western world, you have the fortune of having events like this, change left and right, within seconds, continuously re inventing the world, the peoples, the politics. This victory, the unlikeliness, the teaching lessons, the change of course, the reversals that yes, will come with this, ALL OF IT, is the marvel that the West offers to its people, eternal, swift and deliberate change. Or... find a safe space, with hot chocolate, comfort dogs, full of kleenex for your "cry in", all the while you sooth with Play Doh... Live in fantasy, day dreaming I suggest you embrace and help everybody plough thru the first choice >>>>David Van Wie @GUSTAVO LUZARDO "take a deep breath, calm down, and enjoy the ride" No. I'm the opposition. My job is to punch you in the mouth every day for the next 725 days, then kick you in the balls and stomp on your head. Figuratively speaking, of course. I think I understand the West pretty well. Skip the guided tour of cliches. Go tend your own garden. Your little team of Western philosophers promised the country quite a bit. Get to work. I got these comments from: http://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-willing-to-keep-parts-of-health-law-1478895339#renderComments http://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-willing-to-keep-par...
- cakeface 10y agoAt least one silver lining to the GOP/Trump change in the wind. I hope that we are able to find more as time goes on. As outrageous as Trump is and as much as I find him personally reprehensible I hope for at least a few welcome policy changes.
- audessuscest 10y agoGood. One thing Trump will not have to do.
- theandrewbailey 10y agoOne could say he's already done it.
- walterbell 10y agoYes, before even taking office.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ianai 10y agoI hope he spends the freed up time doing more important things. I suggest he go as far left and oversweeping as he can in his remaining days.
- cnnsucks 10y ago> I suggest he go as far left and oversweeping as he can in his remaining days. I agree. Lets have some real scorched Earth progressivism lest our famously short attention span have us forgetting why we elected Trump and reelected his party's Congress.
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoThere's this thing called "Congress" that is designed to prevent exactly that. (Granted, Congress has been pretty useless at that task for at least the last 12 years...)
- dotancohen 10y ago"Congress"? What's that? The opposite of "Progress".
- mwfunk 10y agoJust about the only thing Congress has been doing for the last 6 years is preventing the president from doing anything. Seriously, that's it. So if that's your criteria for congressional success, mission accomplished. However, pushing back against the president is only one of many things Congress is designed to do. Other things include governing the country and dealing with its problems. These are the tasks they have been useless at. Long on obstruction, short on governance. It's what their supporters elected them to do, so in some sense they are doing the will of the constituents, but it doesn't make it any more adult or responsible or constructive.
- cnnsucks 10y ago> Just about the only thing Congress has been doing for the last 6 years is preventing the president from doing anything. That is correct. And the electorate just validated them for their service at protecting the nation.
- eva1984 10y agoGrant multinational corporate supremacy over government is wrong.
- cpr 10y agoThe TPP was a disguised corporate takeover of national sovereignty, with supranational TPP courts deciding trade policies.
- cconroy 10y agoI dont know why your getting downvoted. This is a serious problem. Also copyrights and patents. Think drugs that people need. This is more about protectionism than free trade from what I've been reading "ISDS would allow foreign companies to challenge U.S. laws — and potentially to pick up huge payouts from taxpayers — without ever stepping foot in a U.S. court. Here’s how it would work. Imagine that the United States bans a toxic chemical that is often added to gasoline because of its health and environmental consequences. If a foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it would normally have to challenge it in a U.S. court. But with ISDS, the company could skip the U.S. courts and go before an international panel of arbitrators. If the company won, the ruling couldn’t be challenged in U.S. courts, and the arbitration panel could require American taxpayers to cough up millions — and even billions — of dollars in damages" [0] [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kill-the-dispute-settlement-language-in-the-trans-pacific-partnership/2015/02/25/ec7705a2-bd1e-11e4-b274-e5209a3bc9a9_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kill-the-dispute-set...
- Hjugo 10y agoTTIP is probably dead as well: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-eu-trade-idUSKBN1361UN http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-eu-trade-idUS... Only problem with that is that CETA is still on it's way, so there is still a possibility that the American corporations get what they wanted to have with TTIP.
- kuschku 10y agoWith Trump wanting to end NAFTA, and CETA having no ISDS but a real court, and Canada being a lot more liberal, I actually don't see much of a threat in CETA.
- georgeglue1 10y agoThis is a shame. Globalism is good for people overall, and the US has almost instantly lost a lot of credibility and influence in the region (especially in contrast to China). EDIT: I'm amazed to see all other comments so far are anti-trade.
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 10y agoI think most of the TPP discussion was FUD, but the backers of TPP are partially responsible for that because it was negotiated in secret (even our own Congress was forbidden from taking notes while viewing it!). They did a horrible job of marketing it to the American people. There are issues with TPP, but it seems they can be fixed and we shouldn't toss the entire thing. But I think a lot of the fear is based on ignorance of trade agreements. Obama is smartly trying to move the country closer to Asia because he sees that is where the growth is. Growth in Europe is anemic and doesn't seem to be getting better anytime soon, so why not align your country with the region that is growing and seems to be looking to the future? Plus we already do a lot of business with Asia, so why not improve relations through better trade deals?
- return0 10y agoWhile globalism just took a big slap in the face, i dont think it's even reversible [it's too big to fail]. Trump may soften some edges, shake it up a bit, but I don't expect fundamental changes. Remember that populist leaders generally don't hold on to positions.
- YuriNiyazov 10y agoDid you miss the part where the election was partially a referendum on globalism?
- jrs235 10y ago25% does not make a mandate. Edit: Only ~50% of eligible voters voted. Half of those voted for the winner. That's only 25% that actively voted in support of the winner.
- jimbokun 10y agoI wonder if this would have helped Hillary if they did this a few months ago.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- walterbell 10y agoNew trade agreements can be negotiated with a broader set of government, corporate and civil society stakeholders, with early public transparency when possible. NAFTA 1.0 is likely to be re-opened. One outcome could be that sensible provisions in TPP find their way into NAFTA 2.0, while parts of NAFTA 1.0 are removed. TPP was a giveaway to a narrow set of special interests. If it is renegotiated, it will at a minimum include a larger set of stakeholders. This time around, there will be a high level of public scrutiny.
- milesskorpen 10y agoTrade deals and transparency unfortunately don't go well together. Trade deals are negotiations — the government can't just decide what to do, since they're dealing with other governments. There needs to be a give and take. If negotiated in public it is way too easy for carefully balanced deals to collapse in the face of opposition from small subgroups even if the net impact is moderately good for lots of people. The flip side is that it is not great that this results in influential industry groups having way too much power. Not sure how to resolve this.
- walterbell 10y agoThere are many points on the spectrum between fully public and fully private, including compartmentalization. TPP took an extreme position, blocking even members of Congress from taking notes. At a minimum, elected representatives of citizens need access to draft documents, and the ability to include trade policy experts on their staff.
- mixedCase 10y ago>The flip side is that it is not great that this results in influential industry groups having way too much power. Not sure how to resolve this. Don't make multinational all-encompasing trade deals. If you want freer trade, the best way to do it is to make small agreements on a country-by-country basis to tear down some protectionist policies each party has against the other. This allows you to pick and choose the deals the population wants.
- binalpatel 10y agoWith a background in Economics - I've always been inclined to support free trade deals. Granted it's one thing to theoretically say they're great, and another to say it to the face of someone who's lost their job because of it. Cheaper goods help the American people in aggregate - but they disproportionately hurt certain swathes of the population, primarily those who work in manufacturing and related fields. One has a large intangible benefit spread out - another has a very tangible human face to it.
- homulilly 10y agoI agree that free trade is generally a good thing but the TPP had too many serious problems to make up for that.
- beaner 10y agoCan you elaborate?
- AlexandrB 10y agoMichael Geist has some excellent coverage [1] of TPP, albeit from a Canadian perspective. Biggest problem with TPP in my mind is that it codifies many aspects of IP law overreach - like extending copyright terms even further and mandating DMCA-like anti-circumvetion rules [2]. [1] http://www.michaelgeist.ca/tech-law-topics/tpp/ http://www.michaelgeist.ca/tech-law-topics/tpp/ [2] https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/National%20Office/2016/07/Trouble_with_TPPs_Copyright_Rules.pdf https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/upload...
- jklinger410 10y agoSubsidies for international corps.
- fryguy 10y agoCountries that allow slavery shouldn't be allowed to be in a free trade agreement competing against American workers, for one.
- dmode 10y agoRepublicans are against free trade now.
- dba7dba 10y agoTrump =! GOP According to many in GOP...
- mixedCase 10y agoWhy do a suprising amount of people in this thread act like the TPP is "just free trade".
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- cardiffspaceman 10y agoThe Fine Article: The Obama administration on Friday gave up all hope of enacting its sweeping Pacific trade agreement, a pact designed to preserve U.S. economic influence in fast-growing Asia that was buried by a wave of antitrade political sentiment that culminated with Tuesday’s presidential election. The WSJ article we are here to talk about actually equates the treaty with free trade. The article also basically describes an alignment with Congressional GOP with Trump on the subject: Just over a year ago Republicans were willing to vote overwhelmingly in support of Mr. Obama’s trade policy. But as the political season approached and voters registered their concerns by supporting Mr. Trump, the GOP reacted coolly to the deal Mr. Obama’s team reached with Japan and 10 others countries just over a year ago in Atlanta. There are reasons not to equate the treaty with free trade and not to equate GOP with Trump but the actual article points out the links.
- sickbeard 10y agoThey are for building walls, cancelling trade agreements, leaving military alliances, I guess they wanna be isolationists
- dnprock 10y agoI think abandoning TPP is a mistake. TPP is for curbing China influence. I think many Americans underestimate China. They are a lot more powerful than they show.
- venomsnake 10y agoAnd why should USA curb china?
- notfromhere 10y agoBecause they're not going to always be interested in living under American hegemony.
- AtheistOfFail 10y agoThen we go to war. It's good for business.
- sickbeard 10y agobecause they are competing?
- dnprock 10y agoThey're eating our lunch. If you think China is a nice guy and compete fairly, you are wrong. China is dominating Asia, pulling away American allies, spreading its economic influence, fast. If we are ok, then we don't have to do anything.
- chillacy 10y agoThat didn't seem to happen with the USSR, and that sentiment was very popular during the Cold War.
- drnex 10y agoThis is a very important question. If you guys wanna be better than China, please do it, by being better yourselves, not by making your competitors worse. That attitude is improper, specially for the most powerful country.
- acconrad 10y agoCan someone explain to me why the sentiment on here has changed? If I remember correctly, when we first learned of this TPP, everyone here was up in arms that it was a secret cabal designed to infringe on innovation. I think there was an EFF blog post describing those sentiments.
- thisisdallas 10y agoI'll get down voted but it doesn't really matter. The sentiment changed because of identity politics. As soon as Trump mentioned he was against the tpp places like hn and reddit suddenly became very quiet in their opposition to it.
- coob 10y agoBoth Clinton and Sanders were against the TPP?
- cnnsucks 10y agoClinton's opposition was an election season aberration. Sanders, being an actual leftist and mostly uninterested in the concerns of multinationals, opposed it from the start, as he did NAFTA and others.
- grzm 10y agoYou know, it would make a really interesting study to follow up on theories (in the scientific sense) like this. The HN data is available, isn't it?
- thisisdallas 10y agoI agree it would be interesting! This certainly isn't scientific at all but a quick search for tpp (all time popularity) shows the first page of results as posts that primarily took place more than a year ago. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=tpp&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=tpp&sort=byPopularity&prefix&p... Trump mentioned he was opposed to the tpp almost exactly one year ago today. If we search the popular 'tpp' posts from December 1st 2015 to today, we get results that show posts that are critical of the tpp but over half of the first page of results have less than 100 upvotes. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=tpp&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=custom&type=story&dateStart=1448928000&dateEnd=1478908800 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=tpp&sort=byPopularity&prefix&p... Like I said, not scientific but kind of interesting I guess?
- snowwrestler 10y agoThe "world order" will look very different by the time Trump leaves office. He wants to cede more of the Middle East to Russia, reduce our participation and leadership in NATO, reduce our military presence in South Korea and Japan, and cancel or renegotiate trade deals, including the TPP. The result will be a world that is more clearly apportioned among 3-4 major powers. Small Asian countries, if they can't get a feeling of solid support from the U.S., will eventually ally themselves with China. And the EU and Russia will battle (hopefully not openly) over the lands between and near them. It's essentially the end of "pax Americana". I think it's incredibly short-sighted. Trump looks at international relations as a quarterly balance sheet but almost certainly does not properly account for the value of the stability the U.S. provides throughout the world now.
- user837387 10y agoAnd of course once the shit hits the fan everybody will refuse to accept responsibility and somehow it will be the Democrats fault. And again the cycle will begin where the Democrats have to again clean up the Republican's mess. Nobody remembers 2008.
- maverick_iceman 10y agoWhy should American taxpayers fund 'Pax Americana'? What's in it for them?
- cloakandswagger 10y agoThe value of stability to who? Other nations? America has ample military resources for defending its own shores, and I fail to see how we'll be negatively impacted by exiting the Middle East (aside from wailing from the pro-Israel lobbies). Trump knows exactly what he's doing, and it is completely in line with his "America First" slogan. It's about focusing on improving our own citizens' lives before pouring trillions into wars, offshore military bases, NATO defense payments and UN programs in the name of globalization.
- hsitz 10y agoAre you unaware that Trump wants to increase military spending?: http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/06/politics/donald-trump-defense-spending-sequester/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/06/politics/donald-trump-defense-...
- Jerry2 10y agoDidn't Google openly support TPP? Seems to me that Google's was one of the biggest losers on Nov 8. Eric Schmidt openly supported Hillary, there were accusations of SERP manipulation, YT censorship and so on. I wonder if FTC [0] will finally be able to go after them for anti-trust since Google's lobbyists won't be able to stop them [1]. [0] http://graphics.wsj.com/google-ftc-report/ http://graphics.wsj.com/google-ftc-report/ [1] https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably-close-relationship-with-the-obama-white-house-in-two-charts/ https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably-close...
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoI strongly suspect you'll see a shift in how the US handles Google. At least a dozen or so Googlers work at the White House, and they'll need to find new jobs by January 20th. (Someone with more time on their hands than me will hopefully track whether or not they all go back to working at Google HQ instead of Google White House.) Given their liberal slant and their strong support for Hillary, even a pro-business-leaning Trump probably isn't going to do Google any favors. And as the four antitrust cases in the EU are likely to go through within the next year, the FTC will probably at least feel some pressure to do their job. Here's Google's open endorsement of the TPP: https://blog.google/topics/public-policy/the-trans-pacific-partnership-step/ https://blog.google/topics/public-policy/the-trans-pacific-p...
- siliconc0w 10y agoWhy Democracy is difficult: There is a politician Who says they believe in an ideology Which tends to favor an idea Which may result in them voting for a policy/law Which leads to an implementation Which needs to be enforced Which is finally very difficult to measure ( because there is no 'control' country that is identical save for this particular law.) And that is like the best case scenario without the analytically impenetrable layers of bureaucracy and politics which can derail and subvert the process.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- mrfusion 10y agoI'm curious if they had left out the most objectionable parts of this deal it seems like it might have been approved without much fanfare.
- hourislate 10y agoIt has been my observation that Free Trade / Globalization has typically benefited the weaker party in the deal or Corporations. The American worker has historically been the causality. Ross Perot use to say hear that sucking sound, it's your jobs going to Mexico and Canada. As time goes on I suppose automation and AI will make cheap labor a non-factor in the cost of a widget. Countries/Corporations will want to trade to secure access to products and markets instead of using cheap labor to gain an advantage. Products will have to compete on their quality and technological advantages. The main factors determining the cost of a product will be clean and reliable power, good transportation network and access to raw materials. Either way it seems likely now that in the future the Manufacturing worker in Asia or America will eventually be a casualty.
- AndrewKemendo 10y agoI think as a somewhat meta-analysis of the outspoken HN crowd on this deal (based on current comments) - it's valuable to look at previous discussions on HN: Top comment excerpt from this thread from a year ago [1]: It is an awful document, with horrible policy, yes....What these leaders are pushing is not democratic, it is oligarchic. Top comment excerpt from this thread from a year ago [2]: Reading these things makes me angry. There are people in the world who uphold economic wealth and ownership over life itself. And there are many others from this search: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=TPP&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=TPP&sort=byPopularity&prefix&p... Note that the EFF's stance hasn't changed: https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp What seems to have changed is the messenger only. That's worth closer introspection. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10363500 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10363500 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11037232 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11037232
- guelo 10y agoThe reason Obama wanted TPP so badly was that he saw it as necessary to contain China's growing influence in South East Asia. Trump, who also claims to want to contain China, seems uninterested or uninformed in this type of geopolitical struggle. The part of the TPP that turned off most techies was the extending and exporting of our draconian Intellectual Property laws. Those laws were designed and pushed by Hollywood as a form of protectionism for the their industry, exactly the kind of protectionism for American companies that Trump claims to support. Hollywood politically is normally aligned with Democrats, but Trump's celebrity is a product of that same Hollywood, so I imagine Trump understands very well the desire for those IP protections.