Last summer when the Democratic National Convention seemed to be overwhelmed by protesters carrying anti-TPP signs, leaders in Taiwan were thinking seriously about what steps and maneuvers they’d need to make into order to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It was readily acknowledged that the largest obstacle for them would be opposition from the Chinese mainland which would impact both their domestic unity on the issue and the willingness of other members to consider them. The idea wasn’t considered outlandish or infeasible, although no one thought it would be easy. The Americans were generally encouraging:
Former White House coordinator for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Matthew Goodman told the trade seminar that Taiwan would benefit “tremendously” from being a member of the TPP.
He said that membership would embed Taiwan more deeply in regional supply chains, drive the domestic reform process, reduce dependence on China, help the island shape the rules of the regional economic order, and become more integrated with the US and Japan.
Goodman said Taiwan was critical to US supply chain management.
However, he said that there would be no “free pass” and Taiwan would have to meet some tough conditions if it wanted to join the TPP.
Goodman cited long-standing agricultural issues and said there were technical barriers to trade that would have to be removed.
He said that Taiwan’s regulatory environment had been a problem, as had foreign-exchange issues.
Goodman said that from the US perspective there was a “trust gap and a credibility gap” and that the burden of proof was on Taiwan to show that it is willing to tackle these problems.
Of course, Matthew Goodman also assured the Taiwanese that he was 98% sure that the treaty would be ratified. Obviously, that all went up in smoke along with the hope that Taiwan would become less dependent on China and “more integrated with the US and Japan.”
Flash forward to today, and Taiwan’s position has deteriorated considerably.
Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen reacted angrily Tuesday to Panama’s decision to shift diplomatic ties to China, insisting that Taipei will never bow down to threats and intimidation from Beijing and is determined to uphold its sovereignty.
Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela announced on television Monday evening that he was establishing diplomatic ties with China and breaking with Taiwan, saying he was “convinced this is the correct path for our country.” He added that China constituted 20 percent of the world’s population, has the second-biggest economy and is the second-biggest user of the Panama Canal.
The move comes as Beijing steps up efforts to isolate Taipei internationally since last year’s election of Tsai.
To see how things are proceeding, consider that Nicaragua and the Dominican Republican are expected to soon follow Panama’s lead and that there are now only 20 countries that formally recognize Taiwan. Their isolation is having more and more practical implications every day.
For the first time in eight years, Taiwan was not invited to the annual assembly of the World Health Organization last month. It was also excluded from a global forum of the International Civil Aviation Organization last year. Both moves reportedly came at the insistence of Beijing, which has made clear its displeasure with Tsai’s reluctance to explicitly endorse the idea that there is only one China, encompassing the mainland and the island of Taiwan.
In the United States, opposition to the TPP was driven by the perception that the agreement would mainly benefit corporations and could undermine our national sovereignty while costing us jobs. It was rarely debated as a part of the Obama administration’s Asia Pivot and their desire to balance out or counter rising Chinese economic, political, and military power in the Pacific.
As for Trump, he continually berated China and said they were out-negotiating us and treating us like chumps. But one way to keep score of how the U.S. is doing compared to China is to see how Taiwan is treated by the international community.
At the moment, their quasi-independence is increasingly rejected. That’s explicit in this Panama news:
“The Government of the Republic of Panama recognizes that only one China exists in the world, the Government of the People’s Republic of China is the only legitimate government that represents all China, and Taiwan forms an inalienable part of Chinese territory,” a joint statement from China and Panama read.
You don’t have to be a supporter of the TPP to see how its collapse was also a collapse of American influence in the Pacific. This is compounded now by an American presidency that is distracted and inept, unreliable and embarrassing for our allies.
Taiwan is suffering the consequences already, but it’s really America that is going to suffer the most in the end. Perhaps the Obama administration deserves a healthy share of the blame here for designing a trade pact that was flawed and couldn’t win support at home, but anyone who is concerned about our country’s position in the world and the health of our alliances should be very alarmed by what has happened and how it is starting to play out.
Trump said he’d stand up to China, but his catastrophically bad leadership is allowing China to roll up the score, especially with respect to Taiwan.
perhaps if there wasn’t so much fear mongering about it in the US we would still be players in the Pacific
It also seems unrealistic that any large trade agreement such as the TPP could be dictated by the US no matter how strong we are, it needed to be ratified in all those other countries as well.
Booman, I’m going to take it as given that your second part above is correct. As Ash Carter put it, “the TPP is like an extra aircraft carrier in the Eastern Pacific”. Let’s take that as given.
The first part is what bothers me. The way you wrote that, it isn’t clear whether you believe the TPP was a giant giveway to corps and richies. B/c here’s the thing: if the TPP was such a giveaway, then it’s actually much, much worse than “oh, the DFHs destroyed our foreign policy and allies’ security”. Instead, it is
So here are my two questions: (1) do you think the TPP was a giveaway to corps & richies? And if so (2) why don’t you write your commentary in the vein of what I described above? Why are the DFHs at fault, instead of the Godforsaken rich?
I doubt anybody but anti-trade absolutists seriously think the TPP was just a giant giveaway to corps and the rich.
But there were certainly some elements that were problematic from a liberal POV concerning dispute resolution and labor and environmental protections. TPP was definitely a mixed bag and there were good reasons for people across the political spectrum to either support or oppose it irrespective of the foreign policy aspects.
Dean Baker isn’t an anti-trade absolutist. And he was pretty clear that TPP was just a big-ass giveaway.
Dean Baker’s critiques of the TPP are considerably more nuanced than that. And in fact he is pretty far on the anti-trade side of the argument, ignoring the role of tax and labor policy on wages to focus blame on international trade.
My main problem was always the IP protections. These imposed the US’s insane IP restrictions on other countries.
I agree completely but those terms were to the benefit of US workers over all the other signatories.
Hard to square opposing TPP on protectionist grounds and also oppose global adoption of US IP protection.
100% unadulterated poppycock. Extending the US IP regime worldwide benefits owners, not workers.
Don’t be silly.
Don’t be silly? What are you talking about? Corporations and assignees own these patents, not the workers at the firms or inventors in their garage basements. General Electric, Siemens, United Technologies, Rolls Royce — they are the beneficiaries of the IP protection.
About 50% of my lifetime wages are the direct result of IP protection of my work. That’s true for plenty of jobs.
There’s reasonable IP protection and then there’s rent seeking which is very common under US IP laws in direct violation of the goals laid out in the constitution.
I don’t know your details, so society could be better off if that percentage were reduced.
I’m not actually defending the IP protections in the TPP. I don’t really approve of the way our existing IP laws are structured. I’m just pointing out that the IP provisions in the TPP were intended to benefit US companies and workers.
If there had been a good way to mediate IP disputes in the pacific back in the late 90s – early 2000s I might have been able to recoup quite a bit of money from OSS software I wrote that was stolen by a few foreign telcom switch manufacturers. I’m sure that story has played out over and over again with US media and code companies losing out to piracy and theft and lacking any reasonable recourse.
Really I’m just reiterating that the TPP was a mixed bag.
I believe most opponents of TPP made their judgment irrespective of our foreign policy interests or goals, mainly convincing themselves that these goals were part of an overall neoliberal agenda of globalists. In this, they were mainly in agreement with Trump and Bannon, and their arguments were not a whole lot more sophisticated.
When taken in complete isolation, the TPP could be criticized on a wide variety of levels, but that was never the choice. The choice always included the consequences of not passing it. Those consequences were mainly ignored and certainly were not given enough weight. Even if many people would have decided to oppose it anyway, too few actually took all the issues seriously or even acknowledged them.
I’m willing to be critical of the Obama administration for failing to create or sell a product that it was pretty important that they succeed in passing. Given its importance, it amounted to a total failure of their Asia policy which it is now basically impossible to recover from because Trump won the election.
I do think that many, though not all, of the concerns about TPP were exaggerated, but I never was willing to wholeheartedly embrace it on its own terms as strictly a trade agreement. I merely thought that the balance of interests was a very close call and that it probably would be better to err on the side of not blowing up our entire Pacific strategy and creating a collapse of American leadership.
Part of that was admittedly that I trusted that Obama would not knowingly push an agreement that was bad as people who were paid to criticize it insisted that it was. Part of it was my own assessment that its flaws were manageable while failure might not be.
Booman, you’re starting to sound like Susan Rice, or in other words, promulgating talking points from the “centrist” or “Republican lite” side of the Democratic Party. Less than two weeks ago, in a NY Times op ed piece, Rice listed first as cause of the havoc wreaked upon US foreign policy, Trump’s withdrawal from the TPP, “leaving key allies empty-handed, fearful of the strategic benefit that will inevitably accrue to China.”
https:/www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/opinion/trump-america-leadership-susan-rice.html?mcubz=2&_r=0
I found this somewhat amusing, as her own boss, Hillary Clinton, in her campaign did not support the TPP, it was that toxic. Of course those who had a clue were fairly certain that Hillary if elected would immediately go back to supporting it, which Rice’s comment appears to corroborate.
U.S. withdrawal from TPP certainly would have consequences in any case. But if worry is justified, it is not merely because of the withdrawal, but because after such a withdrawal the United States needs skilled guidance to navigate the consequences. Obviously we have just the opposite — an idiot who hasn’t got the slightest idea how to run a foreign policy in the best interests of the United States.
And for Taiwan’s current troubles we should also attribute much of the responsibility to President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan, who found it easy to get Trump to follow her plan (after all, she made the call). But I’m not sure she realizes what a doofus she’s dealing with in the White House.
http://thediplomat.com/2016/12/after-the-call-does-taiwan-have-a-plan-for-the-trump-years/
If we can be confident that Hillary would have gone back on her campaign position re TPP, we can also be pretty sure that Sanders would not have. Despite the assumption of some that Sanders is an ignoramus on foreign policy, I think he would be a veritable genius in comparison with Trump.
When Trump withdrew from the TPP, Sanders praised the move (he would have done it himself), but he added: “Now is the time to develop a new trade policy that helps working families, not just multinational corporations. If President Trump is serious about a new policy to help American workers, then I would be delighted to work with him.”
https:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/01/23/sanders-praises-trump-for-nixing-tpp-del
ighted-to-work-with-him-on-pro-worker-policies
(For link to work, close the space in the word “delighted” in the URL)
Of course Trump hasn’t the slightest interest in any such thing. He has not developed any coherent trade policy and never will, because his foreign policy goes no further than to benefit his own business interests, and I have considerable doubts that he and his crew even have the competence to do that.
Well, they definitely screwed up in that TPP was indeed toxic and did not come close to passing and Clinton had no choice but to abandon it.
That’s why I’m willing to blame the Obama administration for a lot of this. No doubt.
But Clinton would have been able to salvage something out of it. Many see that as evidence that she was lying, but I see it as evidence that she had the capability to be a leader.
You really should take some time when you have some to spare to look into the immense amount of work that went into working on TPP and all the countries that took part and how many of their leaders made hard concessions and took difficult votes based on assurances that we gave them that they thing would pass here at home.
And it was all very much in a foreign policy context among important economic partners and in many cases military allies.
Just coming out against all of that without really taking any of that seriously was a pretty sad thing to see. People did not want to know what the point was or why it was pursued or what it would mean for China’s influence if it failed.
It was all very much treated as if it were just a trade agreement like any other, when it was really so much more than that.
Yeah, that was a key difference. It’s been a long long time since I trusted Obama.
Thank you for this Booman. Critique of policy should always start against the null hypothesis: the status quo.
>>I believe most opponents of TPP made their judgment irrespective of our foreign policy interests or goals
I believe most advocates of TPP never said a word about foreign policy interests or goals until it had become clear that unregulated “free” trade was a vote-loser. Then the story changed to “well we need to do it because it’s really about foreign policy”.
I like and respect your writing. I like and respect your positions. And I will continue to do that.
But you failed to answer my question, eh? The TPP -can- be both a giveaway to the unjustly rich, and -also- critical to our common security alliances. But you’re not even willing to answer, man.
And to be clear: I am a giant Obama fan, and still, I don’t just “trust” him to get these things right. He could have insisted on greater environmental & labor protections. He could have insisted that NGOs would have standing -in- the agreement, to sue for redress. He didn’t do that, eh? He could have gutted the ISDS provisions. He didn’t do that, eh?
Look: After the richies take it in the neck for our common security for the next 40 years, we can talk about how it’s time for share-and-share-alike. But until then, sorry, not buying it.
ALSO, I think it’s pretty disingenuous to tar Dean Baker and others with Donald Trump’s brush. The left critique of the TPP is that it’s bad for workers EVERYWHERE, for poor people EVERYWHERE, and not merely in the USA.
I did not mention Dean Baker.
It’s kind of hard to sell a strategic realignment of supply chains and military relationships as a “trade agreement”, when that agreement includes countries that are perceived as taking away US jobs.
The attempt to sneak the agreement through destroyed its credibility, and so did the dogged secrecy (except for large corporations) that surrounded the negotiations. The public was sure that the corporations would get what they wanted. They doubted that this would benefit the American people.
Sort of an unforced error or own goal set-up.
Trump’s aggressive policies against the Americas are in part what is driving this backlash, not to mention the whole deportation atrocity.
People got tired of trade deals that wound up losing American jobs. So far, Trump’s deportations have not resulted in creating good American jobs — austerity of employers you know. They just can’t find Americans willing to work for substandard wages and benefits and aren’t willing to do what the market demands. This deadlock is going to take some time to sort out.
when did anyone try to sneak it through? I must have missed that part
That’s how sneaky they were!
I know you mean that ironically, but actually it’s true.
See my comments above about Hillary’s position on the TPP, above.
All that was known for quite a few years was only that negotiations were going on. It took leaks from the meetings to suss out many of the disastrous intellectual property provisions with respect to pharmaceuticals, media, software, and other items that were legislated restraints on trade intended to guarantee corporate monopolies of the companies fortunate enough to be a part of the negotiations. Most everything came out at the last minute to ensure that analysts could not properly assess the impacts on ordinary consumers and US workers.
The sneaking through was done through reinstituting the fast-track process that did not allow a full debate in Congress. The public never knew why the agreement was necessary and there was not extensive discussion of the supposed national security and foreign policy implications.
How soon people are forgetting how Congress used to operate during the news cycle when everything was not dominated by partisan talking points. The public used to get substance and was capable of good policy discussions locally.
fast track only really meant no amendments could be attached which makes sense for a very complicated agreement negotiated with many different countries, it wouldn’t be up to us to alter it all on our own
It was posted well ahead of time, I’m not sure what you expected for getting information as something is being negotiated. I wouldn’t expect us to ever know what’s being negotiated on these types of agreements. We elect these people to do these negotiations our input is on do we want to support or oppose what they negotiated with our Congress people.
We elected only one member of the House and no Senators. And President Obama. My experience since 2009 on my representative actually registering the detail of what my opinion is is very disappointing. The set the political questions and they check off the public opinion in their categories in response to the questions they set up. If you input cannot be forced in their preconceived categories, they have no way of handling it to “inform” their decisions.
The actual negotiators were not elected nor where the representative interests involved in the drafting and negotiations elected, nor were they identified.
As I remember, what was posted was 600 pages or so with little attempt to respond to the criticism that had come out about intellectual property and about the ability to overturn national laws regarding environmental regulation and government-sponsored infrastructure (especially healthcare) as “non-tariff restrains on trade. Those two seemed to be what the US negotiators were the most insistent on. The public deserved to know what interests were driving those decisions and the details of the language related to those decisions.
After the results of NAFTA and the WTO, there is a reaction in which people are holding trade agreements to higher standards of accountability. The systemic dysfunction in Congress makes it unreliable as check and balance that reflects the actual public will.
In point of fact, my position over the three or so years I was tracking these negotiations was the question of what was the necessity of doing it so quickly. It wasn’t even a matter of pragmatic limits on Wilson’s principle of open agreements openly arrived at. There was a huge amount that the public was not being told; that fact led to the sense that what was being done was fundamental, could affect people’s lives for decades to come, and was sought by the permanent Presdidency as a fait accompli.
You are defending it almost as an insider with skin in the game.
Late to the thread, don’t have time to read all the comments.
I’ll say this, Obama did as good a job of messaging on TPP as he did with ACA, he maintained control of the process as well as he kept the FBI neutral during the last election cycle, and his judgment on what should be included was about as strong as his willingness to go along with the Simpson- Bowles commission and the negotiating that led to the sequester.
If the TPP was really a stealth vehicle to extend/maintain US/Western ties with non-Chinese pacific rim countries then it was very poor judgment to let it get larded up with the crappy corporate welfare/property/extra-judicial rights that were unnecessary. If they needed to have some clear economic agreements to provide the stealth nature, fine. But the people I trust on this subject told me that it became an opportunity for corporate lobbyists to exploit without respect to the underlying purpose. Nothing I ever heard from Obama or his team ever came close to clearly refuting those claims.
Anyway, it will be interesting to see how Obama goes down in history books if/when every detail of what was passed in 2009/10 is reversed under Trump/Republican rule.
I’m thinking there’s a distinct possibility he goes down as a charismatic leader who broke the minority barrier and had some momentary successes (Great Recession recovery, Obamacare) but (hopefully) set the stage for some later Democrats (with greater negotiating and administrative skills) to make some lasting changes.
I’m thinking the current political era will actually date from Reagan until some Democratic majority emerges in the future. Clinton and Obama will be seen as presidents that leaned against but were ultimately shaped by the conservative Republican agenda.
That Obama’s decision to appoint Comey may cost the Democrats as many as 3 Supreme Court justices and the end of Medicare and Medicaid as we know it as well as reversing Obamacare are pretty disastrous results, as are the slaughter at the state level from 2010 on.
Anyway, right now I’d say Obama is overrated but the final decision will really depend on what happens in 2018/2020 and how long Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kennedy live/stay on the court.
Anyway, the TPP, along with the pursuit of the grand bargain as well as the lack of care in making appointments and building a stronger at the state levels are all of the same theme that is ultimately jeopardizing the durability of his accomplishments.