Trump preparing withdrawal from South Korea trade deal

[DonViejo]

Source: The Washington Post




By Damian Paletta September 2 at 1:47 PM

President Trump has instructed advisers to prepare a withdrawal from the U.S.’s free trade agreement with South Korea, several people close to the process said, a move that would stoke economic tensions with the U.S. ally at a time both countries confront a crisis over North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

While it is still possible Trump could decide to stay in the agreement in order to renegotiate its terms, the internal preparations for terminating the deal are far along and the formal withdrawal process could begin as soon as this coming week, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A number of senior White House officials are trying to prevent Trump from withdrawing from the agreement, including National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, and National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, these people said.

A White House spokeswoman said “discussions are ongoing but we have no announcements at this time.”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/09/02/trump-plans-withdrawal-from-south-korea-trade-deal

[bettyellen]

1. Whoa- Korea has been a huge and growing part of the apparel industry... this will have repercussions

[forgotmylogin]

12. Does he know there is a North Korea and a South Korea?

Or is he just think it's all the same thing?

[bettyellen]

13. I honestly think it's about getting a cut for him or his friends....

And he'll say it's a better deal for the USA, but he will profit somehow.

[VMA131Marine]

2. He needs to be stopped before he further breaks the country.

[TomCADem]

3. Doesn't Bernie Sanders Strongly Support This Move, Too?

Bernie Sanders and Trump are on the same page on this. Here is be Bernie attacking this agreement:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/the-tpp-must-be-defeated_b_7352166.html

“Since 2001, nearly 60,000 manufacturing plants in this country have been shut down and we have lost over 4.7 million decent paying manufacturing jobs. NAFTA has led to the loss of nearly 700,000 jobs. PNTR with China has led to the loss of 2.7 million jobs. Our trade agreement with South Korea has led to the loss of about 75,000 jobs. While bad trade agreements are not the only reason why manufacturing jobs in the U.S. have declined, they are an important factor.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-fletcher/unlike-clinton-sanders-re_b_9015000.html

Sanders voted No on the South Korea Free Trade Agreement, quantitatively the biggest agreement since NAFTA. And the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. And Panama.

The difference is that while Trump's anti-immigration and anti-trade stances are motivated by racism and xenophobia, Bernie's stances are motivated by concern for working class Americans.

[elleng]

5. Would be good if you'd start with this, imo:

'Trump's anti-immigration and anti-trade stances are motivated by racism and xenophobia, Bernie's stances are motivated by concern for working class Americans.'

[TomCADem]

6. At the same time, do we care if the policy results are the same?

For example, lets say Trump supports Single Payer because the American Neo-Nazi party incorporated it into their platform to promote an American Super Race, would we really care? Should we?

[elleng]

7. We should recognize from whence the approach came, and why, yes.

[Ford_Prefect]

8. Words matter as much as results. The Why of Trump is never a good thing.

Please do not twist any Progressive action and result into 45's bizarre take on The White Man's Burden.

[elleng]

17. Thanks.

[Adrahil]

15. Concern or not....

Sanders dogmatic opposition to trade deals is right out of the 60's. The bad news for Sanders is that the data doesn't support this premise that protectionist policies will preserve jobs in the long term. Unfortunately, a lot people believe him anyway.

[karynnj]

9. In fact, Bernie, Trump and HRC ALL spoke against trade deals in 2016

Part of the problem is that it has always been easy to demonise trade deals -- from Perot to Trump! A large part of the problem is that economics involved is complicated. The other is that impacts of trends that had little to do with the trade deals were attributed to the trade deals and very few people - especilally politicians were willing to speak against things that were just not true.

With Bernie, I have no doubt that he believes what he says and has said the same things for decades. Yet, I heard Jeffery Sachs, one of his economic advisers speaking of TPP after the election. His comment boiled down to the fact that the economic deal did increase the size of the "pie", BUT that there were still winners and losers -- and to be fair, some of the additional profits from the "winners" needed to taxed to keep whole the "losers' by improving options for replacement jobs. This is miles away from Bernie's own comments.

With HRC, it is particularly frustrating as the biggest accomplishment of her time as Secretary of State was a very ill defined pivot to Asia which TPP was the cornerstone of. (The clearest explanation I ever read was that Asia will be where many of the big economic gains will occur and power will shift there. The pivot was designed to improve our position and the positions of our natural allies there.) Anyone reading DU for as long as I did would have understood why HRC abruptly changed her position. The Democratic left was 100% against it seeing it as aiding international companies and Wall Street and hurting people.

My guess is that the primaries would have played out the same way had HRC continued her nuanced position that TPP was important, but that it might need some tweeks. (This (defined for whatever current treaty was discussed) incidentially has been the position of virtually every Democrat who has run since the 1990s.) Though I can't prove it, I would assume that almost anyone for whom this was a litmus test issue, already voted for Bernie. I doubt I am the only one who figured that HRC would back some way to pass TPP in the lame duck or in her Presidency if she won.

I also think that had she and her team worked to make the issue easy to understand, she would have been given credit for her intelligence, articulateness and her willingness to defend an unpopular position. Note that as Trump pushes on NAFTA - the pushback is that it would hurt many Americans, especially farmers, if it really was ended.

(To complete this, I have no idea what Trump really thinks and assume he has little idea what was in the treaty - just that Obama was for it.)

[elleng]

16. Thanks for a complex discussion of an issue that's become more and more difficult

for the public to understand and for politicians and economists to 'explain.'

[TomCADem]

19. It Is Understandable That Trump Would Push a Herbert Hoover Type of Trade Policy...

When campaigning for president during 1928, Republican Herbert Hoover's promise to help domestic industries from being undercut by cheaper foreign goods by increasing tariffs. He won, and was successful in increasing tariffs on many competing European goods, which help drive Europe into a depression. This depression helped plant the seeds for extremism.

I can see why Trump would would push a xenophobic, isolationist trade and immigration policy. It does resonate well with the fears of many Americans by scapegoating the "other" while ignoring the obvious targets of oppression, which are elites at home who enjoy low taxes and whose industries might also benefit from a competitive advantage relative to foreign competitors. Indeed, Brexit showed that trade and immigration were nice code words for demonizing non-white immigrants with the UK suddenly trying to maintain its trade agreements even as it heightens barriers to immigration. Populist rhetoric is about scapegoats and racism disguised as concern for American workers.

This is why people of color need to hold the left and Democrats accountable. Sadly, they too are starting to adopt and echo Trump's anti-trade and anti-immigration rhetoric. It is too easy to scapegoat foreigners for domestic ills resulting from a system that is tilted against American workers.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Smoot-Hawley-Tariff-Act

Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, formally United States Tariff Act of 1930, also called Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act, U.S. legislation (June 17, 1930) that raised import duties to protect American businesses and farmers, adding considerable strain to the international economic climate of the Great Depression. The act takes its name from its chief sponsors, Senator Reed Smoot of Utah, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Representative Willis Hawley of Oregon, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. It was the last legislation under which the U.S. Congress set actual tariff rates.

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act raised the United States’s already high tariff rates. In 1922 Congress had enacted the Fordney-McCumber Act, which was among the most punitive protectionist tariffs passed in the country’s history, raising the average import tax to some 40 percent. The Fordney-McCumber tariff prompted retaliation from European governments but did little to dampen U.S. prosperity. Throughout the 1920s, however, as European farmers recovered from World War I and their American counterparts faced intense competition and declining prices because of overproduction, U.S. agricultural interests lobbied the federal government for protection against agricultural imports. In his 1928 campaign for the presidency, Republican candidate Herbert Hoover promised to increase tariffs on agricultural goods, but after he took office lobbyists from other economic sectors encouraged him to support a broader increase. Although an increase in tariffs was supported by most Republicans, an effort to raise import duties failed in 1929, largely because of opposition from centrist Republicans in the U.S. Senate. In response to the stock market crash of 1929, however, protectionism gained strength, and, though the tariff legislation subsequently passed only by a narrow margin (44–42) in the Senate, it passed easily in the House of Representatives. Despite a petition from more than 1,000 economists urging him to veto the legislation, Hoover signed the bill into law on June 17, 1930.

Smoot-Hawley contributed to the early loss of confidence on Wall Street and signaled U.S. isolationism. By raising the average tariff by some 20 percent, it also prompted retaliation from foreign governments, and many overseas banks began to fail. (Because the legislation set both specific and ad valorem tariff rates [i.e., rates based on the value of the product], determining the precise percentage increase in tariff levels is difficult and a subject of debate among economists.) Within two years some two dozen countries adopted similar “beggar-thy-neighbour” duties, making worse an already beleaguered world economy and reducing global trade. U.S. imports from and exports to Europe fell by some two-thirds between 1929 and 1932, while overall global trade declined by similar levels in the four years that the legislation was in effect.

In 1934 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, reducing tariff levels and promoting trade liberalization and cooperation with foreign governments. Some observers have argued that by deepening the Great Depression the tariff may have contributed to the rise of political extremism, enabling leaders such as Adolf Hitler to improve their political strength and gain power.

[Corgigal]

4. Did he want another

hotel named after him and they said no. Got to be some personal dumb reason.

[applegrove]

10. Oh god.

[sandensea]

11. Good - assuming he follows though (which I doubt)

KORUS has been a poster child of free-trade dogma and its many counterproductive effects - not least of which are the political ones.

That said, this sounds like more hollow talk from King Con. And even if he did make an effort to rescind KORUS, the Korean chaebols will probably just bribe him.

[Sugar Smack]

14. He's probably just itching

to use his nuke on NK, and then South Korea would be useless to him. I'm only saying this because trump's a fucking monster.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

18. Too bad Trump's dad didn't withdraw