So what was the TPP, and why Trump killed it
The TPP is DOA.
President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order Monday announcing the U.S. will withdraw from negotiating the TPP, or Trans-Pacific Partnership deal.
“Great thing for the American worker, what we just did,” he told the press corps after signing, as his chief adviser Steve Bannon, former executive editor of Breitbart, a platform for the so-called “alt-right,” looked on with a tight grin.
During a campaign stop in Ohio this summer, Trump 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.”
As divisive as that language sounds, whoever got into the White House was likely to ditch the TPP. Hillary Clinton, adopting a progressive issue from Bernie Sanders, also came out against the deal during her run, saying in August, “I will stop any trade deal that kills jobs or holds down wages, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I oppose it now, I’ll oppose it after the election and I’ll oppose it as president.”
So what was the TPP, and why did some people hate it so much — on both the right and the left?
Jobs Created and Destroyed
The Trans-Pacific Partnership, pushed hard by the Obama administration, was essentially an attempt to create a single market for the U.S. and 11 countries that border the Pacific Ocean, including Canada, Mexico, and Chile. The idea was to make goods flow more freely and cheaply between all partners — who together represented one third of global trading.
Specifically, the TPP’s largest goal was to maintain U.S. trade dominance in Asia, bringing the various trading partners under America’s wing as a way to ward off China’s growing economic influence, said MSNBC business correspondent Ali Velshi.
The idea was that if everyone brought down taxes on exported goods, U.S. companies would pay less for imports — while benefiting from cheaper labor overseas.
