A Tale of Two Treaties

The United States and China are taking a very different approach to international trade. President Trump is intent on renegotiating or canceling American trade treaties such as NAFTA while the Chinese are creating a broad new trade alliance in Asia that excludes the United States.

One of President Trump’s first official acts was to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiated by the Obama Administration. Trump’s act, which fulfilled a campaign promise, shattered the trade agreement and allowed China to pick up the pieces.

In November 2017, less than a year after Trump’s order withdrawing from the TPP, a summit was held in Manila to negotiate an alternative, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership or RCEP. Talks progressed quickly and the 16 nations are expected to sign an agreement at a November 2018 summit in Singapore. The White House announced this week that President Trump would skip the meeting as well as the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Papua New Guinea.

The RCEP includes many of the same Asian nations that would have participated in the TPP. These include Australia, Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Vietnam. In addition, it adds a host of others such as Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, and Thailand. The biggest addition to the TPP countries is China.

With the country in a growing trade war with the United States, participation in the RCEP gives China an opportunity to find new markets for exports that would have been sold to the US. President Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods can be at least partially offset by the free trade agreement that encompasses a large swath of Asia and the Pacific.

President Trump is taking a different approach. The president recently threatened once again to withdraw from NAFTA if he cannot get a “fair deal” from Mexico and Canada. In a Sept. 1 tweet, Trump said that there was “no political necessity to keep Canada in the new NAFTA deal” and added, “Congress should not interfere w/ these negotiations or I will simply terminate NAFTA entirely & we will be far better off….”

Last week, the US and Mexico reached a preliminary agreement on a new trade deal, but negotiations with Canada appear to have stalled. Mr. Trump sent a letter to Congress on Friday announcing his intention to sign a deal with Mexico in the next 90 days. The timeline would allow an agreement to be signed before Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Mexico's new left-wing president takes office on Dec. 1.

The Trump Administration is also under pressure to show results before the midterm elections in November. Showing that the Trump approach to trade deals yields results would provide a boost to beleaguered Republican candidates and help to stem chances of a blue wave.

“With goodwill and flexibility on all sides, we can get there,” Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said. “For Canada, the focus is on getting a good deal and once we have a good deal for Canada, we'll be done.”

The end of President Trump’s tweet shows the fundamental difference between the Trump approach and the Chinese approach. The president, who last month tweeted that “tariffs are the greatest,” seems to see international trade as more of a threat to the US economy than an opportunity for growth. On the other hand, China sees the opportunity to expand international markets as a way to both bring wealth back home and grow Chinese influence around the world.

The irony is that Donald Trump does not see that his retreat from the world, his building of both literal and figurative walls between America and the rest of the world, does not make America great again. To the contrary, Trump’s trade policies not only hurt American companies and consumers, it also diminishes American influence around the world. That is apparent in the new Asian trade deal that will be written for China’s benefit instead of America’s.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Trump Is Now Open To Joining TPP

After railing against the Trans Pacific Partnership during the campaign and removing the United States from the treaty, President Trump signaled last night that he is open to rejoining the trade deal.

The president tweeted at about 11:00 p.m. Thursday night, “Would only join TPP if the deal were substantially better than the deal offered to Pres. Obama. We already have BILATERAL deals with six of the eleven nations in TPP, and are working to make a deal with the biggest of those nations, Japan, who has hit us hard on trade for years!”

One of Trump's first acts as president was to withdraw the US from the TPP, which was never ratified by Congress. Trump signed the order to leave the treaty on January 23, 2017, only three days after becoming president. At the time, he said, “Great thing for the American worker, what we just did.”

Also on Thursday, the president also told a group of elected officials from “farm states” that he had asked economic adviser Larry Kudlow and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to consider whether the US should join the trade pact per Politico. It isn't clear what changes Trump would seek or whether other countries would agree to reopen negotiations on the trade deal that has already been ratified.

The move toward acceptance of the free trade deal is a radical departure for President Trump, who has spent the last several weeks talking about implementing protectionist tariffs on a long list of imported products. Trump has also engaged in a rhetorical trade war with China, which is not a party to the TPP.

During the campaign, Trump was critical of trade deals such as NAFTA and the TPP. At a campaign stop in Ohio in June 2016, he said, “The Trans-Pacific Partnership is another disaster done and pushed by special interests who want to rape our country, just a continuing rape of our country.”

It is not clear what changed Trump's opinion of the TPP, but it is possible that he realized that the pact is needed to counterbalance Chinese influence in the Pacific region. The TPP includes Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. In recent years, Chinese trade and investment in Latin America has been growing in addition to the influence it already wields in Asia.

If Trump can successfully complete his 180-degree pivot on the TPP, it would not mark his first such reversal. The president has previously changed his mind on several issues from immigration to gun control to varying receptions from his base. Trump's anti-trade rhetoric won him support from blue-collar factory workers in the Rust Belt who believe that free trade pacts have been responsible for American job losses. If these voters are angered by Trump's reversal on the TPP, the president's pivot toward free trade might be short-lived.

Originally published on the Resurgent

Evan McMullin in his own words

EvanMcMullin.com

Evan McMullin’s campaign is gaining steam, but a big question for many voters is “Where does Evan McMullin stand on the issues?” As McMullin gains ballot access in a growing number of states, the question of who Evan McMullin is and exactly what he stands for remains. We have combed interviews to find Evan McMullin in his own words.

On why he’s running: “One of the biggest threats this country faces is Islamist terrorism. I am the only credible candidate who has any experience whatsoever, firsthand, fighting terrorists,” McMullin said to Bloomberg. “I know exactly what needs to be done to defeat ISIS and other such groups. On day one, I can start that process.”

He further stated on Fox News, “Donald Trump is already losing this election. I entered the race six days ago when he was down ten points at the national level. State polls in critical states over the past couple of days show that he’s even further down in them. Donald Trump has no chance of winning this election. He has alienated too wide a swath of the American population. He continues to put his foot in his mouth. He will not win. He’s weak and I think he’s melting down…. He is ensuring that Hillary Clinton is our next president.”

McMullin told Heat Street, “I am the only conservative in this race. Donald Trump is not a conservative. He has pretended to be at times and not at other times. I have been a conservative my entire life. I believe firmly that I am the only one that can carry that mantle. And I am committed to uniting this country and I believe that under these [conservative] principles… that the country can be united again. It's been divided for too long and both of these candidates, Clinton and Trump, in their own individual ways, are further dividing us. We need a new generation of leadership.”

McMullin agreed that getting down ticket Republicans elected was very important and called encouraging disaffected conservatives “a positive element of what we’re doing. We’re giving the American people someone to vote for, not just against.”

On Donald Trump: “Donald Trump is no conservative,” he told ABC News. He won the nomination “through misrepresenting himself and exploiting vulnerabilities that the American people have…. I do believe he’s a fraud and a con man. That’s not something I say lightly. That is my professional opinion.”

McMullin told National Review, “I believe Donald Trump is a bona fide authoritarian. I am deeply concerned that if he were president of the United States he would act accordingly.”

On Hillary Clinton: “Hillary Clinton has proven that she doesn’t believe she’s accountable to the American people,” he said to ABC News. The email server issue, a lot of people talk about how classified information was compromised and how lives and sensitive operations were compromised as well… Part of the story that didn’t come out that is even more important is that she believes that she is unaccountable to the American people. She went to great lengths to move her work, her email traffic, off the State Department system. She does not believe that she’s accountable to the American people.”

“So we’re in a time now where Americans, hardworking Americans, don’t feel like they’re being listened to. They don’t feel like their government thinks it’s accountable to them. Are we really going to elect a president who personifies that? I think we shouldn’t.”

On whether Hillary is worse than Trump: “I think they would both be absolutely terrible for the country,” McMullin told ABC News. “I think neither of them understand what makes this country special. Neither of them envision a government that is accountable to the people. Neither of them respect our system of checks and balances.”

“I don’t want either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton to become president. Neither of them is acceptable to Americans.”

On trade: On Fox News, McMullin said, “I’m for [the Trans Pacific Partnership]. We need the trade. Ninety-five percent of the world’s consumers are outside our borders and we need access to them. Right now, as it is, we are limited in so many ways in so many countries…. We have got to get to yes on this….”

“On trade, I’ll just mention that there are people who are genuinely suffering as a result of displaced industries and jobs. Automation is another part of that. It isn’t only trade. We do need to hear their concerns. We do need to help them transition more. I believe that and that’s a message conservatives need to promote more, but we can’t stop trading and broadening our trade opportunities. We have to do that.”

On immigration: “I think we need to secure our border first and foremost,” McMullin told the Fox News panel. “It’s a basic part of being a country. It’s a basic piece of national security. We must do that.”

“As far as a wall is concerned,” he continued, “the experts actually say that in some places a wall is necessary, in some places a double wall is necessary and in other places a wall wouldn’t help. I’m for whatever it takes to secure our border with Mexico. We’ve got to do it.”

“I’m for enforcing our laws, but not for deporting 11 million people. I think it’s ridiculous. It would cause so much trouble, economically and in other ways. It’s a ridiculous idea. I oppose that. I think that what we need to do is for those here illegally, who are not criminals and want to stay, there should be a path towards a legal presence in the United States.”

On Heat Street, McMullin said specifically that the pathway would be towards “legal residency and, in some cases, citizenship.”

When asked about Syrian refugees, McMullin said, “If you’re a terrorist and you want to come to the United States, the worse possible way to do it is as a refugee. You go through a year-and-a-half to two years of vetting. If you want to come to the United States and you’re a terrorist, you’re much better off just coming through on the visa waiver program from Europe or just walking across the border from Mexico, so I think there is a lot of hysteria and unjustified hysteria around the refugee situation. I think we need to be more careful and thoughtful and accurate with the way we talk about that issue because it has implications for a variety of other interests that we have overseas.

McMullin told ABC News, “I don’t think we should ban people based on their religion. I don’t think we should call an ethnic group racist.”

On ISIS: “The problem is the pace of what we’ve been doing. President Obama has articulated a containment strategy that sort of has a slow road to defeating ISIS. The problem is for an Islamist organization to have a safe haven the size of the one ISIS has, you buy them time to plot and plan the kinds of attacks that happened in Europe, the United States and elsewhere over the last year, so the pace needs to pick up. This isn’t something that we can sort of get around to casually and that’s my objection to what President Obama is doing.”

When a Fox panelist asked if ISIS should be destroyed, McMullin replied, “absolutely.”

The same panelist then followed up with a question about whether American ground forces should be used. “I don’t think we should take anything off the table,” McMullin answered, “but there are a lot of great options… for us before we put troops on the ground. We need to use CIA operations; we need to use our Special Forces. I’ve been there, done that. We are very good at this. We need to train indigenous forces. There are countries in the region who have volunteered to put up their own troops. We need to exhaust some of these things before we go ahead and put traditional troops on the ground. I don’t think it’s necessary. I think we can defeat ISIS through other means….”

On the prisoners at Gitmo: “I don’t think Gitmo should be closed. These are enemy combatants and 

they deserve to stay where they are until hostilities are completed…. These are people who want to kill Americans en masse. I’ve dealt with these people face-to-face. They are intelligent, many of them, they’re well-traveled, they’re well-studied. These are very motivated people who eat, sleep and drink destroying America and the idea that they shouldn’t be locked up and held…. We need to put ourselves on a war footing and remember that’s what we’re involved in….”

On Russia: “I’m no friend of any authoritarian,” McMullin told ABC. “Donald Trump is an authoritarian and the leaders around the world, in history and currently, that he admires, that he aspires to be in one way or another, are all authoritarians. It’s very interesting that that’s the case. He speaks very openly about it. I think we all need to be concerned with that.”

“I’m no beginner to this game, but Donald Trump is. He sees Putin as a friend. But Putin sees him as a big, fat target.”

In the Washington Post, McMullin called Donald Trump’s pro-Russian advisors “Moscow’s most successful intelligence operation. They must be beside themselves to have co-opted either willingly or unwillingly someone on the doorstep” of the presidency.

-To be continued

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