Trump: I'll Ditch TPP Trade Deal on Day One of My Presidency (arstechnica.com) 600
US President-elect Donald Trump has confirmed that the U.S. will pull out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) -- a trade deal involving 12 Pacific Rim nations -- "on day one" of his presidency. From a report on ArsTechnica: Trump, in a YouTube video outlining plans for his first 100 days in office, said: "I'm going to issue our notification of intent to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a potential disaster for our country." He added: "Instead, we will negotiate fair, bilateral trade deals that bring jobs and industry back on to American shores." An emphasis on bilateral trade deals may call into question both the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), involving dozens of nations, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Although the latter is between the US and the European Union, the complex political structure of the EU means that effectively 28 nations are involved and can influence the outcome of the deal. This was demonstrated by the dramatic intervention of the Walloon regional government in the signing of CETA, the bloc's trade deal with Canada.
Great for China! (Score:4, Insightful)
No principles. (Score:5, Insightful)
For years up to a week ago: TPP is an abomination love child between Hitler and Satan and needs to die.
Now that Trump doesn't want it: This will ruin the nation and will only benefit China. TPP Must Go Forward!
Re: (Score:2)
Welcome to Slashdot! Please check your logic and sanity at the door. msmash will show you to the latest clickbait, or you can follow BeuaHD to the Slashvertisements, though you'll have to sit through a few of his unintelligible summaries that he somehow copy pastad incorrectly.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:No principles. (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No principles. (Score:5, Funny)
You want to talk about HRC's "super-predators" comment? Yeah, let's talk about that. I have a Black son. I hate that she made that comment, and I hate that she never even bothered to apologize for it. I found HRC, on a personal level, totally odious. I've said so to other Liberal friends (I do still consider myself a pretty ardent Liberal). And I voted for Sanders, and would have happily voted for him in the General Elections if I had a choice.
And it's also worth noting that HRC's super-predator comment was made 20 years ago. You can find odious things she's done from this decade :).
As for Bannon being racist or not ... man, I don't think there's going to be any way to talk about this that will convince you, because you'll find reasons to discount any evidence I throw at you. I think that if Bannon were to personally lynch some Jews you'd probably argue that it wasn't that he hates Jews, it's just that those guys happened to have ripped him off. But here's a link for other people who are interested in making up their own mind:
http://www.motherjones.com/kev... [motherjones.com]
(Yes, that's his ex-wife talking, so obviously she's biased; and yes, that's Mother Jones, which is obviously biased. You'll be able to discount anyone who disagrees with you as obviously biased. Enjoy your bubble).
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For years up to a week ago: TPP is an abomination love child between Hitler and Satan and needs to die.
Now that Trump doesn't want it: This will ruin the nation and will only benefit China. TPP Must Go Forward!
Eh? The people presenting the views are not Slashdot. I have yet to see anyone on Slashdot say that TPP must go forward. The TPP is indeed pure evil in relation to intellectual property.
That does not mean it can't have good sides too. Regardless of the good parts of it, the bad parts make it untenable overall. What that means is that if China gets to dictate shit now, it is the IP people who have put us in this position by making TPP into poison.
Re:No principles. (Score:5, Interesting)
What I don't want is the continuing idea that globalization and trade are killing jobs. Automation and recycling have killed 5-6 jobs IIRC for 1 job lost to globalization.
Dude, come all the way over already.
"Automation" is a fancy new scare name for technical progress. Technical progress and trade are essentially the same: they create wealth.
Technical progress lead America from a labor force of 90% farm workers in 1790 to 26% in 1900, to 12% in 1950, and to under 2% today. Do you see 88% of our labor force unemployed? Of course not. Neither the farm tractor, nor fertilizer, nor GMO, nor the wooden shipping pallet destroyed all jobs forever; these things freed up labor to perform other tasks. That's why food costs in 1900 were 40% of the median American family's income, in 1950 33%, and today around 12% even though we eat outside of home a lot more. We essentially pay servants to cook and serve our food, and still pay about 1/3 as much to eat as we did 60 years ago.
The threats are a matter of rate. All of them.
If you unemploy 30% of the labor force in one six-month swoop of the guillotine, your economy falls apart. Mass-unemployment means a collapse of consumer purchasing power, removing the revenue streams required to pay other workers, terminating more jobs. Eventually the dust settles on a country that can't raise enough taxes to carry the unemployed because they're all not working--no labor, no production, no wealth. Money represents what's made and sold, and the making and selling requires labor; technical progress reduces that labor, and half the labor means half the wage paid, thus less money cost, which is how prices eventually fall--with the help of ever-mounting economic pressure.
Unemploy people at a slower rate than those pressures drive prices down and you find consumers gaining additional buying power: wages don't decrease, but wage-hours paid for products do, and the few unemployed are easily supported by our welfare system with only a tiny portion of our gain. We seek to buy new things with the money we have--and the force of hundreds of millions of consumers with just TEN DOLLARS now-unspent means billions of revenue for new products (including buying more of the same old products). One billion dollars represents roughly 60,000 minimum-wage jobs, or nearly 0.04% of the labor force--every 1% swing requires a $150 reduction of expenses per consumer to recover the lost jobs.
That goes for both trade and technical progress. Self-driving cars and flying delivery drones? You want the Government to get regulation out to enable that PDQ. If the technology develops to the point where we know it's ready-to-go, but the Government hasn't given the green-light, eventual regulation to allow it will result in rapid replacement of delivery drivers, freight trucking drivers, and all form of mail carriers. Put up the regulation before anyone's ready to do it, and those job losses will come in patches here and there as the technology develops, as suitability increases, and as businesses individually become comfortable with the risks at different times. Once someone's job is gone, you have to wait for the business to be unable to keep prices at a point to simply take profit--they're certainly not unwilling--and that will happen, but not on the same damned day.
The obsession with creating jobs is a tricky one. I've notated it before. It's both good and bad, depending on your goals. The long-term consequences of Malthusian growth erase either: an increase in unemployment will vanish in several years if the economy doesn't get worse, thanks to more early retirement, longer delays to enter workforce (that whole "everyone goes to grad school in a recession" thing), death of the poorest (sucks), and, ultimately, slower birth rate; while a decrease in unemployment will vanish due to later retirement, faster entry to the workforce, and higher birthrate
Do you now realize why Trump won? (Score:5, Interesting)
Bernie Sanders' supporter here. I didn't vote on Nov. 8th, because I simply couldn't back a lobbyist like Clinton. By killing the TPP, and maybe also TiSA and TTIP, Trump has just taken the most progressive political choice in the last 40 years, it's the first real reversal of the globalization process, something unthinkable until a few years ago. Clinton would have surely "renegotiated" the TPP, and after few useless and cosmetic changes, passed it. After all, it was "the gold standard" for her. Obama himself wanted it, and he's technically supposed to be more progressive than Clinton.
Surely I don't like many of Trump's proposals (slash taxes also for the rich, "clean" coal...), but on trade he could be the most "leftist" president in decades.
Instead of complaining, next time choose the right candidate at the Democratic primaries.
Re:Do you now realize why Trump won? (Score:4, Interesting)
I would assume tarrifs and other protectionist measures, such as every country has done since international trade became a driving force in our economies. Free trade is a fairly recent phenomena, and it has primarily benefited the developing nations and the multinational corporate gatekeepers. It's probably long past time to reevaluate our position.
Really there's only a very few options in the face of current economic realities, though the details can be tweaked:
1) Globalization, which gets us import cheap products today at the expense of exporting the associated wealth, jobs, and industry to nations that lack our protections for workers and the environment and can thus operate much more cheaply (which in the long term will likely lead to...)
2) Remove our own worker and environmental protections so that we can compete on a global market - i.e. reduce the wealth and standard of living of hard-working Americans to that of their counterparts in China, India, Africa, etc.
3) Implement some form of economic protectionism so that American made products can compete, at least in our local markets, with those from developing nations
And I suppose also
4) Reintroduce an aggressive "Made in America" campaign to encourage people to pay substantially more for the same products made locally, so that the wealth and jobs remain in the country. That worked once before, it might work again, though I believe Americans' median wealth (as distinct from income) has declined considerably since then, so it may be a much harder sell.
Re:Do you now realize why Trump won? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Do you now realize why Trump won? (Score:4, Interesting)
You're right, it doesn't. And trade can indeed be a positive sum game, most of modern civilization is based on that, right down to the fact that I can trade my computer skills for someones automotive skills so that we both come out ahead (likely with money as and intermediary in a multi-stage exchange, but still).
The problem specifically comes when we engage in free trade agreements that will obviously disadvantage whole sectors of our economy without ensuring there's at least a credible idea as to what those displaced workers will do instead. Effectively we're "outsourcing" medium- skill manufacturing jobs to our trading partners, without making any effort to create new medium-skill jobs to replace them - virtually all new job growth has been in the low-skill (and low-pay) service sector, while virtually all of the gains from outsourcing the old ones went to a few people in charge.
Such trade deals may well be good for "our economy" according to some arbitrary measurement such as GDP, but there's nothing inherently good about the economy - it's a tool created to serve our purposes, and it does no good to improve the hammer at the expense of the carpenter.
So the question must be asked, what is the purpose of the economy? I would say that fundamentally it exists to facilitate interpersonal trade so than we can improve our lives more efficiently. As such, anything that benefits "the economy" at the expense of the people is something to be opposed.
Engaging in free trade agreements without a clear concept of how it will benefit the people of this country is, at best, magical thinking, and at worse a treasonous misuse of government authority for the benefit of the few.
Re:Do you now realize why Trump won? (Score:5, Insightful)
>more products are purchasable when labor costs are low
Unfortunately that's only true initially - because labor are the people buying goods, and the flip side of low labor costs is low consumer income, which means that people aren't making enough money to buy the products they're producing. That was Henry Ford's genius - paying his workers enough to be able to buy his product. Unfortunately, the cumulative effect of short-term rational decisions by all parties (manufacturers lower wages and/or move overseas, consumers buy cheaper imported products) is the gradual collapse of our nation's economic engine as wealth flows steadily overseas. A classic tragedy of the commons, solvable only by large-scale education / behavioral modification campaigns (such as the Made in the USA program) and/or government intervention to level the playing field (i.e. tariffs,etc).
I was also talking *wealth* not purchasing power, which is why I explicitly stated "as distinct from income". Income has largely stagnated, while real wealth has diminished thanks to, among other things, the financial crimes of bankers and other wealthy individuals - holdings of real estate, stocks, cash reserves, etc. have all fallen among the 99%. Purchasing power may be technically the same, but with less of a financial safety net short-term benefits such as lower immediate cost become more compelling.
>technical progress lowers the cost of goods and services, spreading the same labor out to make more things
Agreed. However, that's only of an obvious net benefit if you still employ the same number of people at the same (inflation adjusted) wage. If technological progress lets one person do the work of two, and the first person gets paid the same while the second loses his job and takes a low-paying service-sector job instead, while the CEO, shareholders, etc. pocket the difference (which is the case - something like 98% of all new wealth generated in the last several decades has gone to the 1%), then the median purchasing power of the population has fallen substantially.
Re:Do you now realize why Trump won? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Rust Belt had already been in decline for over a decade by the time the WTO agreements were made. And you're forgetting that before WTO was GATT, so it's not like there weren't multilateral trade agreements.
So I'll ask again, what do you propose to replace it with? Do you wish to have American goods disadvantaged on the international markets? And what if the rest of the world decides to enter multilateral agreements, and larger trading partners like the EU and the Asian nations start throwing up trade barriers to US goods?
What's more, all those jobs you reference are going to disappear no matter what. Automation is increasingly going to reduce employment, even in those countries where many such jobs have gone. Once again we see how the "anti-globalist" types are little more than naive luddites.
Re:Do you now realize why Trump won? (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation: I don't like people who disagree with me, therefore I'll just reject them and believe in my fantasy.
First of all, I doubt very much that Trump is going to dump all trade deals. I doubt he's even going to dump NAFTA, the US, Canadian and Mexican economies are too integrated now to imagine throwing up monster tariff walls would do anything but harm American interests.
Second of all, your forty years too late to save the Rust Belt, and the Rust Belt is hardly the first manufacturing area to go into a long-term decline. That's what happens.
The fact is that the only illness here is a lot of peoples unwillingness to accept that life is about change, and a few crafty politicians that have sold them a load of shit. Do you seriously think that Apple is going to decamp its manufacturing back to the US? The only thing that will happen is that any attempts at increasing tariffs on foreign-manufactured products like electronics will lead factories in Asia to further automate to bring price points down. And really, that would just hasten what's already happening.
And that's the reality. Those Chinese and Mexican workers undercutting your much vaunted half-century old wages are a decade or two from being in the same place. Your real war ought to be with the robots, but then again, that would make you little different than all the fletchers angry that cannon and musket put them out of business, or all the proverbial buggy whip manufacturers put out of business by Henry Ford.
I actually pity you, that you imagine that a mere politician has the power to restrain progress for any great length of time. My tip to you is rather than moan because you can't get a good job in manufacturing like your old man did, is to get an education. And that is where the government could help, but it won't help anyone by tariff wars that will only end up hurting domestic interests.
Correct, those jobs are not coming back ever (Score:3, Insightful)
I actually pity you, that you imagine that a mere politician has the power to restrain progress for any great length of time.
This is exactly the case, 100%. Trump sold a bill of goods saying he'll bring jobs back and people bought it. There's actually a really great article over at Cracked [cracked.com] about Trump's popularity. The TL;DR summary is that "Make America Great Again" means "bring back the manufacturing jobs", not necessarily "let's have racism again". At least that's the theory, anyways.
But those j
Re:Correct, those jobs are not coming back ever (Score:5, Insightful)
That's my view completely. Western economies are in many transition, and really, have been for a while. If I blame governments for anything, it's for not better preparing workers in these areas for the decline, and for the what they will do in the post-decline. The fact is that the pace of automation has been picking up for several decades now, and the vision of many industries has been to minimize the number of workers on the floor. In some cases, like Japan, this has as much to do with a shrinking population and a lack of actual workers, but in other jurisdictions, it is really about profitability. Even Foxxcon is retooling in China, with more automation, which means all those Asians that the Trump squad believe stole their jobs will soon be on the unemployment line themselves.
I grew up and still live in a manufacturing town in British Columbia, here it's forestry. When my father got his job at a sawmill in the late 1960s, the mill itself employed something like 700-900 people. When the first major retooling came in the late 1970s, with the then state of the art computers, there were significant job losses. The recession of the early 1980s saw those numbers drop due to economic circumstances, and by the time the economy recovered, most of the lost jobs never came back. Now, forty years after the first automation systems were brought in, the mill has less than one hundred full time employees (I think it's below 80 now), and each iteration brings that number down. In my town, the only real solution has been a drop in population, which is normal.
In reality, the town's population had grown massively during the 1940s as the forest industry became a major employer, but of course for many of the workers in their 50s, who came in to the industry at the cusp of the changes, they don't see the big picture, that they came in at the end of a manufacturing bubble, and they do the same thing up here in Canada that Trump's supporters do in the States, just lash out at the immigrants and the Asians. They want to hear politicians that will tell them nice fantasies about how the elites are out to get them, because that's better than facing the fact that, at the end of the day, we all have to bear responsibility for our life choices, and any of us who found good pay in what amounts to a relatively low skill position, well, that was lucky, but the luck has run out, and no amount of posturing by politicians will make those jobs come back.
Re:Do you now realize why Trump won? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just curious why you think people in your country need jobs more than people in other countries do?
Just curious, why do you think it's my responsibility to create a jobs program in other countries?
Re: Do you now realize why Trump won? (Score:3)
So that people in other countries have money to buy your country's exports, perhaps?
Re: Do you now realize why Trump won? (Score:3)
You do realize that attitude is what allowed Trump to win, right?
If you're not with us, your agin' us!
Everyone not voting for my candidate is a bigot!
Driving things further apart only hurts us all.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You do realize that attitude is what allowed Trump to win, right?
If you're not with us, your agin' us!
Everyone not voting for my candidate is a bigot!
No, it was people like yourself who try to make it impossible to draw a distinction between a merely unpopular candidate and a dangerous fascist. Equating resistance to Trump with resistance to politicians like Clinton, Bush, or Obama is what creates a climate where average voters cannot tell the difference between a partisan politician and a demagogue. If you can't call Trump a bigot then the word loses all meaning.
Trump is the US version of Mohamed Morsi, and he shows that the US is not immune to the same
Re:Do you now realize why Trump won? (Score:5, Insightful)
Everybody has the right to demand good government, and complain if they don't get it. Even people who didn't vote.
A just and fair government does not have to be earned by voting or miltary service or paying taxes. It is the birthright of every person.
Re:Do you now realize why Trump won? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the kind of argument I would expect a child to make. If you want something, you need to go out and do your part to make it happen - otherwise, you are just being a petulant child when you are upset $X didn't happen. "Why didn't $SOMEONE_ELSE make what I wanted to happen, happen? It's not fair!"
Welcome to the real world - it isn't all puppies and rainbows.
Re: (Score:3)
we call him 11. His name is Xi Jinping (Score:2)
it's pretty self explanatory.
Re:Great for China! (Score:5, Insightful)
Japan and Taiwan are dirt poor? News to me.
Re:Great for China! (Score:4, Funny)
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Foxconn is a Taiwanese company with factories in China assembling iPhones. Businessmen dont let politics come in the way of profit
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Go ahead and look up how much trade already exists between China and Taiwan, China and Japan. It's quite a lot.
Indeed. There is no particular need for trading partners to like each other. In July of 1914, the largest bilateral trading relationship in the world was between Britain and Germany. A month later they were killing each other on an industrial scale.
Also, the China-led trade agreement that will likely replace TPP is called RCEP [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:3)
> This guy is an idiot. We are talking about WW1 and he is talking about Churchil... sigh!
You want to see an idiot... look in a mirror. Or for that matter at Churchill. As "First Lord of the Admiralty" during the beginning of WW1, he was the guy who convinced leadership to attack Gallipoli. Yes folks, *THAT* "Battle of Gallipoli", in 1915. This included a battle where 500 members of the "Australian Light Horse" got off their horses and charged a Turkish position, on foot. The attack was a failure, and t
Re: (Score:2)
Who are they going to trade with, and for what? Other than South Korea, every other Asian country is dirt poor.
For highly developed nations, consider Japan, Singapore, Taiwan.
And then there are less developed large nations, like Indonesia.
And if you go by geography, beyond TPP candidates: Russia, Saudi Arabia, India (poor per person, but number 3 in the world by PPP GDP, number 7 by nominal GDP), and so on.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Great for China! (Score:5, Insightful)
The chief reason for TPP was to create a trade alliance to stand up to China, as part of a much larger effort to counterbalance China's growing influence through the rest of this century.
Indeed. TPP excluded China, although China is the biggest trading partner of many of the members of TPP. The often-stated intention was to negotiate and adopt TPP, and then let China join afterwards, so they would be accepting the terms negotiated under American leadership, without being able to tilt the agreement in their favor.
That is obviously not going to happen now. Instead RCEP will be negotiated under Chinese leadership, and if/when America joins, we will have to accept those terms.
As America economically withdraws from the world, Chinese led institutions like AIIB [wikipedia.org] will gain influence. Eventually, the dollar may even lose its status as the world's primary reserve currency, with big negative consequences for the American economy.
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Magnets. Ferrite as well as rare earth. China owns the market in terms of production (the only serious non-China magnet manufacturing is Supergauss in Brazil for ferrites, and Mitsubishi in Japan for rare earth), and after the US-based manufacturing closed down around 2000, prices started climbing up.
Then the whole "you cannot buy raw rare earths without high taxes" happened and the price of neos in the late 2000s exploded (10-20X increase). China owned the rare earth market (mining and refining), and pla
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"Who are they going to trade with, and for what? Other than South Korea, every other Asian country is dirt poor."
Dirt poor countries like not having to pay customs, tariffs, import-export taxes and other stuff making their goods more expensive.
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"And it means starting the whole negotiating process all over again with the same people with the same interests who will want the same things.
And what we'll get is something very similar to what we have already."
The Art Of The Deal, the moronic way. Throwing a temper tantrum won't get a better deal, on the contrary.
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The president has control over the economy but not in the sense of controlling it year to year. The policies of Obama did blunt the recession. However, the push to expand the national debt will effect the U.S. economy greatly in coming years. In effect, the U.S. borrowed against future prosperity.
The policies of the last 30 years contributed to the current state of the U.S. economy. Given the rest of the world, it is not so bad. The Republicans complain bitterly about clean air and water policies, yet they
The president doesn't control the economy (Score:3)
The president has control over the economy but not in the sense of controlling it year to year.
The president generally speaking has very, very little direct control over the economy. Even indirectly he doesn't really control much. Congress controls the budget, the Federal Reserve controls the money supply. All the president can do is direct the treasury, work on trade policy and foreign relations and a few other minor levers but if the economy goes in the tank there isn't much the president can do about it.
However, the push to expand the national debt will effect the U.S. economy greatly in coming years. In effect, the U.S. borrowed against future prosperity.
Congress controls the budget not the president. If we are spending beyond our means that is
Re: Great for China! (Score:5, Informative)
"uh... remember the Great Recession under Bush?"
That recession was going to happen no matter what. And guess what -- It was predicted by the Anderson Forecast in 2000. Guess who's administration that was under? Wasn't Bush.
http://www.uclaforecast.com/co... [uclaforecast.com]
The US was already heading down the recession path when 9/11 happened a year later. That was a HUGE blow to our economy.
" and now that economic growth is going well, unemployment is down, inflation is nil, people vote to go back to that"
What's the rate of underemployed? What's the number of people who are no longer being COUNTED as unemployed? They didn't vote to go back to that -- they voted because they are hurting and the last 8 years did nothing to fix their hurt.
I'm not saying Trump is the answer -- I honestly don't know who was worse -- Trump or Clinton (I voted for neither) but your blinders are not really helping you see reality. You might want to lift them off a bit and take a peek.
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Uhm, remember the fake recovery we're still having?
Jobless claims are down but a significant portion of that is attributed to people who stopped looking for jobs or took lower paying/part-time jobs instead.
Mean/median household income is still below pre-recession levels and basically flat with growth diverging further and further from GDP.
This massive recovery is centered around the DJIA, not the actual income and spending power of people.
This economic 'growth' we're experiencing is an anemic 1.1% vs other
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In trade, China needs the U.S. more than vice-versa.
Exactly, and China knows this. That is why China has been aggressively seeking alternative markets worldwide. Everywhere from Central and South America to Africa, not to mention the rest of Asia. China is also busy trying to build up their own internal consumption and pushed RMB to be a part of SDR.
China knows its military expansion is only made possible by its economic success, and we know this too. Unlike other Asian and European countries where we use trade as a tool to either entice democratic re
False decisiveness. (Score:5, Insightful)
I would plan for a lot of this sort of thing from him. False shows of decisiveness. A lot of people seem to think that "doing something" is what a leader does, even if that "something" isn't well thought out or planned.
He doesn't know how to fix Obamacare but he'll "do something", lol.
I expect Trump to be worse than his base expects, but better than the melting down, hysterical media and left cries about.
Re:False decisiveness. (Score:4, Insightful)
Scary, because that's how we got into Ireq: "We are doing something about terror!" (Alternative spelling intentional.)
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It only looked successful. Some kept wondering, "where are all the bodies if so many fighters were wiped out?"
It seems no reporter followed up on that; maybe those in charge kept them from snooping around? Turns out the fighters were just hiding in the hills or blending into towns, waiting for better opportunities to strike back. We saw a fake victory. It's why we are still there.
We were royally duped with that country also. One dupe (Afghanistan) wa
Re:False decisiveness. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know if this is false decisiveness, but he has to do something, be it a stunt or not. He's already getting a lot of heat from almost half of the country. He needs to consolidate and keep calm his electoral base at least. Politics, just like economy, is more about emotions than technicalities.
Re:False decisiveness. (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know if this is false decisiveness, but he has to do something, be it a stunt or not. He's already getting a lot of heat from almost half of the country. He needs to consolidate and keep calm his electoral base at least. Politics, just like economy, is more about emotions than technicalities.
To paraphrase Caesar in Rome: "If I do nothing, I will appear weak. If I accept the deal my predecessor made, my support will turn against me. Therefore, I must strike it down.
I suspect we'll see a lot of this.
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I expect Trump to be worse than his base expects, but better than the melting down, hysterical media and left cries about.
How quickly we normalize. My thought after reading this was "I can live with the lack of Nuclear Armageddon".
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He was railing against the TPP from the start of his campaign. It's not like this is a new thing.
Re:False decisiveness. (Score:4, Interesting)
I think he's going to keep a lot of them. It won't be reported like that, though. The media has learned nothing and is right back to lying and the demoralization propaganda, so expect stories like "Trump lied about being Hitler and is going back on his promise to gas all Mexican muslim gay jews, and boy are his evil nazi supporters mad about it!"
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An ObamaCare alternative just requires some very difficult ( and unpopular in certain circles ) decisions to be made.
You start by declaring Health Care a right and a critical one at that. Health shouldn't be a perk for the rich only.
You then regulate the entire Health Care industry. This includes Big Pharma.
Means: No more 5000% price increases on medications or $50,000 hospital bills that your insurance refuses to cover
Once regulated, the prices are now something most can afford and makes it easier to swi
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Racism - he's cool with it
Actually, I'm reasonably certain when asked in an interview about it, he turned to the camera and said "STOP IT." And his spokespeople keep denouncing it. On the other hand, he's appointing Bannon, and he's avoided directly denouncing the more "white nationalist" elements of the alt-right. (Let's not rehash the arguments over with Bannon is or isn't actually racist, okay? Let's just note that there's a significant group of peop
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Building a wall - now a fence
The whole wall thing was the stupidest part of the Trump campaign to me. I know the wall is largely symbolic, but everyone knows that this won't actually work. If you really want to stop illegal immigration, all you need to do is have the FBI and INS start arresting execs and managers at every company/farm/business that employs illegals and sticking them with real prison-time and hefty fines. You start doing that consistently and regularly and illegal immigration will dry up, as the incentive for illegals t
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You should never underestimate the capacity of a narcissistic con man to come up with unexpected ways to screw you over.
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This seems pretty specific. I thought most libs hated TPP as well ?
They did, until Trump came out against it, and now they love it.
It seems that they've decided after 8 years of being just fine with war, they're against that again now, too [youtube.com].
Hypocrisy at it's finest (Score:5, Insightful)
*EVERYONE* here was bitching about TPP until Trump decided to do away with it.
Because Trump.
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*EVERYONE* here was bitching about TPP until Trump decided to do away with it.
I haven't yet seen any non Trump supporters lamenting the passing of TTP. So, your outrage appears misplaced. And no, finding one or two crazy ACs doesn't really prove anything except that AC is anonymous.
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I should clarify. I haven't yet seen any non Trump supporters HERE lamenting its passing. I haven't been following the TTP on any other discussion sites.
Re:Hypocrisy at it's finest (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a Trump supporter, but I see this (dumping the TPP) as good news.
Re:Hypocrisy at it's finest (Score:5, Informative)
I haven't yet seen any non Trump supporters lamenting the passing of TTP.
All that means is that you haven't been [eff.org] paying [dcmediagroup.us] attention [senate.gov]. Please leave this to those of us that are. Thanks so much.
Re:Hypocrisy at it's finest (Score:5, Insightful)
Want to boycott those lead laced toys from Shanghai? TPP was bad. If you like pirated content, TPP was bad.
The only people that benefited from TPP were IP holders and large corporations like Walmart and Amazon.
But bluegutang is right, I'm doubtful if Trump understands why educated members of the left are against TPP. Unless my conspiracy theory holds true and Trump is secretly a Marxist.
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Trump wouldn't even understand, much less agree with, the reasons people here gave for opposing TPP.
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yup, never let it be said that the world doesn't have a shortage of hypocrites.
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Under Hillary, it still wouldn't be a legal treaty, but it would be 'in force'.
Is the US a democracy or a dictatorship? (Score:2)
I thought this was up to congress now.
Does the Rule of Law no longer apply? If congress likes the treaty, they can ratify it before Trump is coronated.
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Congress through its leadership can block any legislation from even getting considered. It's not in the constitution that way, but it's the way the procedural processes have evolved. Like the filibuster. Last year, McConnell told the WH TPP won't even be considered, just like the SCOTUS nominee. If it doesn't get to the floor for a vote, it never happened. The new administration can then merely come in, say we're withdrawing it and it's gone from any agenda consideration.
Unfortunately for all of us, lef
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Foreign policy is broadly an executive function, but none of it is binding on us until the senate ratifies a treaty.
TPP is just a group attempting to write a treaty. Eventually, the completed treaty would be presented to the member governments to ratify. They aren't at that stage yet, so the president is free to tell the working group that we aren't going to participate any more. In theory, they could continue working on the treaty and present it to us anyway, but I think everyone understands the futilit
Congress will ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... not Trump.
They weren't going to approve it anyway.
It's like Trump declaring that, on day one, he'll adjust the atmospheric composition to be 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen.
Thanks Trump! (Score:2)
Thanks Obama!
I'm confused (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:I'm confused (Score:5, Informative)
Trump isn't Republican or right wing. He is a NYC Democrat. Just look at his history.
It's hard to tell what Trump is. It's true that he was a Democrat. It's also true that he has been a (registered) Republican since April 2012. But he has changed his party affiliation at least five times since the late 1980s. [washingtontimes.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Trump is not a traditional Republican. He was actually a declared Democrat until a few years ago. Of course so is Lyndon Larouche...
Re:I'm confused (Score:5, Insightful)
Neoconservatives are pro-globalization. Traditional conservatives are anti-globalism, pro-nationalism. Whatever Trump is, he's an economic nationalist, so he gets the support of traditional conservatives, like the Tea Party voters (note this is distinct from how the Tea Party candidates like Rubio got co-opted into the Neocon establishment. The story of the Tea Party is voters worker their asses off to get "their" people into office in 2010 - 2014 only to be met with immediate betrayal, resulting in the seething, frothing anger that enabled Trump).
Hopefully with the election of Trump and the destruction of the Republican and Democrat establishments we can relegate neoconservatism to the ash heap of history, along with the worst of leftist identity politics.
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Political spectrum is not a single-axis diagram.
Start Packing (Score:2)
There has also been talk about ending the H1-B visa program. So, all the slave labor from Pakistan can start packing your bags, you're going home.
I'm Torn (Score:2, Interesting)
On the one hand, I think that the TPP is a horrendous trade deal that negatively pushes US views on intellectual property onto other sovereign nations.
On the otherhand anything Trump says he is going to do needs to be resisted, because his actions seem to be incredibly self centered and poorly thought out, or designed to promote Trump first and foremost.
It will be interesting to see how this paradoxical conundrum plays out.
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True, and as much as I dislike Trump, I for one am glad that he's still saying he plans on scuttling the TPP. At least assuming he's not just holding out for his own palms to be greased by the megacorps first. After all, one of the few other points he was consistent on during his campaign was eliminating the excessive influence of Wall Street, etc. on the government - but his transition team picks are certainly making it look like exactly the opposite will be the case.
When dealing with a con man with as l
Re: (Score:2)
I would suggest you oppose actions you deem to not be in your (or the nation's) best interests, but take as happy accident the stuff that works out in your favor. So, cheer the death of the TPP, because that's in your interest. I would also suggest cheering that it seems we will not be going to war against Russia over Syria, and will instead stop arming ISIS and will let Russia stomp them out.
TPP in its present form was bad (Score:2)
TPP I think we can all agree was a horrible piece of work. Negotiated in secret, lots of provisions that only big business would like etc. Obama has given up on it, Trump ran against, The Senate won't consider it so it's dead in its current form. That doesn't mean it can't be renegotiated and reworked and I think that'll be the tactic moving forward which may result in multiple agreements. This huge conglomeration of things that made it into TPP to me at least made it seem like a shadow government and fr
Someone needs to tell him.... (Score:2)
Someone needs to tell him that that's not the way it works.
Nothing gets done on the first day except for maybe figuring out how the blinds work and where the bathrooms are.
Legislation is just a little more complicated than that. He couldn't repeal anything on his first day even if the entire country, Congress included, wanted it done. Legislation isn't like a light switch.
Re: (Score:3)
Your mistake is believing that Trump understands how government works. This would be a common error as his supporters likely believe he does as well. He probably believes that as president he has unlimited authority to do things our constitution doesn't allow him to do. He does have authority to change how government works a little bit, but he doesn't have the authority to unilaterally withdraw the US from ratified treaties or any of the 99% of things he's promised.
Hell he might actually understand that, bu
Rule of law? (Score:2)
Trump's not really changing anything (Score:5, Informative)
Well Trump is throwing out one prospective trade deal and substituting other prospective trade deals without actually modifying current trade relations in any way. So this looks like a prima facie attempt to honor a campaign promise without, in fact, making a change. Either his anti-trade campaign messages were empty demagogic promises or his new Republican allies educated him on trade.
The latter would be a good thing. People's intuitions about trade are often mistaken:
- They believe that employment is zero sum, that is, that the total number of jobs is fixed, so that if a foreigner gains a job, a U.S. citizen must necessarily lose a job. This is incorrect. Foreigners to not "steal" jobs from Americans. In fact, global employment levels can and do fluctuate.
- They overlook that every producer is also a consumer. If you are employed and make something and sell it, you then have an income with which to purchase goods and services produced by others. As with employment, global production and consumption are variable, not fixed. The more people work, the more goods there are to go around. "Getting rid of those foreign slackers," is just as disdainful of others as "Those damn foreigners are stealing our jobs," but, pragmatically, is more likely to lead to socially beneficial policy outcomes. Consider improvements in the quality of life and reduction in our tax burden if Africans had productive jobs instead instead of relying on the industrialized world to support them with foreign aid.
- They are unaware of the law of comparative advantage, which tells us that both those with an absolute advantage and those with an absolute disadvantage benefit from trade. The naive and incorrect assumption is that those producers with an absolute advantage displace all others.
- They forget that trade is an exchange. They give us stuff and we give them stuff in exchange. To give them stuff, we have to have stuff to give them. Who makes that stuff? Employees. You can not trade goods without having domestic employees to manufacture the goods which you produce to trade.
- They are unaware of the balance of payments and fear that all the money will end up abroad. Foreigners hoarding cash is a benefit to the U.S., because when foreigners hoard U.S. dollars they give us cars, televisions, and computers and all we have given them in trade is little pieces of paper with drawings of our presidents. Less that beneficial-to-us cash hoarding, over time all purchases are reciprocated, so that for every sale to the United States by a foreign entity there is a sale to the foreign entity by from the U.S. There has to be, because when we buy something from a foreign nation the foreigners are left holding U.S. cash which is only of value if spent in the U.S., or traded to someone else. That someone else can only exchange U.S. cash with others or redeem it for U.S. goods. If it is traded abroad perpetually and never redeemed, that is cash hoarding and we benefit.
As a Canadian.... (Score:3)
I hope when Trump exits the TPP that the rest of the signatories will go back and strip out all the parts the US lobbied to put in that nobody else wanted, like the changes to copyright laws. No need for them to be in there anymore.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/201... [michaelgeist.ca]
May end up being a much better agreement without the US.
Perhaps (Score:3)
Could someone ask him to dump the TTIP as well?
As far as the world is allowed to know, it is pretty much the same thing but across the Atlantic instead.
Good for Australia (Score:3)
As an Australian, Trump killing the TPP is a good thing. There are some parts of the TPP that would have forced some crazy laws on us, without opening up enough trade opportunities. Stripping out everything that US wanted in the TPP and the other countries involved going ahead with a new agreement should be relatively easy. The US is probably not going to be hurt by not being involved and most of the other countries involved will do better, with the likely exceptions of Canada and Mexico.
The Australian economy depends more on trade with China than with the US and we already have a free trade agreement with China, although China still has too many tariffs. China is already pushing their own broad alternative to the TPP which might mean further tariff reductions. A trade war between the US and China could have some positives for the rest of the world.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, he's already making sure massive conflicts of interest are ok!
Soooooo much better!
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Re: New Trump fan here! (Score:5, Insightful)
What replacement for Obamacare exactly? The one where you pay more and only save by not having medical procedures done?
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What replacement for Obamacare exactly? The one where you pay more and only save by not having medical procedures done?
You do realize that people buying from exchanges have seen their premiums go up dramatically over the last couple of years, right? Health insurance is now more expensive for almost everybody than it was before Obamacare. The only thing Obamacare does, besides making health insurance more expensive, is let the federal government fine you if you don't get health insurance. Lovely.
Depends on dependents (Score:3)
The range over which ACA tax subsidy phases out depends on the size of your tax household: Someone with income at the federal poverty level [healthcare.gov] gets the full subsidy, decreasing toward 4*FPL which gets none. (Below FPL, you instead get either Medicaid or an exemption from the ISR tax, depending on how red your state is.) So it mostly depends on how many dependents you have. If AC #53339571 is single with no dependents, 4*FPL is close to $48,000. But if you're married with two dependents, it's about twice that.
Re: (Score:2)
Be careful with your investments man. Be ready to protect yourself from a downturn on short notice.
I've been a big Trump fan ever since he promised to build a wall during the announcement of his candidacy. But I don't believe that the globalists are defeated yet, and there are literally trillions of dollars at stake.
In my opinion, the current highs in the markets are not organic; someone is blowing a bubble. The goal is probably to draw you in, then burn you out so that they can blame the pain on Trump.
I
Why EFF has opposed TPP (Score:5, Informative)
If there are truly bad aspects to the TPP, then spell those out
Electronic Frontier Foundation has spelled out the TPP's truly bad aspects in a category of articles on its site [eff.org].
Eminent public domain (Score:5, Informative)
Without the TPP, Congress could roll back Hollywood's bought and paid for copyright law changes. For example, Congress could make some of the exemptions from anti-circumvention law pursuant to LoC's triennial rulemaking permanent. Or it could expand compulsory licenses for orphan works. Or it could establish an "Eminent Public Domain" program that allows free use of a work of authorship while compensating its author, by estimating a copyright's fair market value and letting the people crowdfund a "taking" pursuant to the Fifth Amendment.
But with the TPP, Congress's hands would be tied.
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All about the exchange rate.
At this stage there is just bluster and talk of trade wars. In the end, the only real change will be China will move the peg a little more. The exchange rate won't be allowed to float.
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