David Ignatius sees light at the end of the trade negotiations tunnel:
The Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, is down to its final haggling. This week, negotiators from 12 countries met in New York to resolve the remaining issues, which have been narrowed from more than 2,000. The toughest matters left, ironically, are agricultural disputes with Japan and dairy and poultry disagreements with Canada.
U.S. negotiators hope they can close out the TPP deal by the summer and get it approved by Congress — thanks to Republican votes promised by House Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.). Republicans like trade even more than they dislike Obama, evidently. It’s a jobs bill that doesn’t cost any money. The Peterson Institute for International Economics estimates that the market-opening features of the TPP will boost U.S. exports by about $123 billion annually by 2025 and add 600,000 jobs.
If an agreement could be reached that Senate Republicans would support, it would certainly play hob with the narrative.
I’m in favor of free trade agreements in the abstract but wary of them in the specific. What’s being negotiated is not a free trade agreement. You can write a free trade agreement on the back of a napkin and decide for or against it in a moment. What’s actually happening is that the various parties are working out the shape that managed trade among the Pacific Rim countries will take. They’re picking winners and losers. And make no mistake, there will be American losers. TANSTAAFL.
One of my college professors once wisecracked that he never paid any attention to an undergraduate paper until the first “however”. To know whether the TPP is good or not so good, I’ll need to see the “howevers”.
That having been said I think the future of trade negotiations is in bilateral pacts or multi-lateral ones like the TPP rather than worldwide agreements through the WTO. There are just too many basic disagreements to play out the WTO rope any farther.
The toughest matters left, ironically, are agricultural disputes with Japan and dairy and poultry disagreements with Canada.
Why is that ironic?
It’s a jobs bill that doesn’t cost any money.
Does he really that naive, or does he assume his audience is?