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[Tubby Isaacs]

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TPP is good in a high level strategy way in that it binds all the countries in with America, and should increase trade between them and be a brake on China, which has to operate by less favourable WTO terms and has issues with its standards. I'm sure there are bits that can be usefully lost though.

Trump will be pissing off Australia and New Zealand right off. Interesting contrast with our Brit Nationalists who see Aus-NZ as key partners in the "Anglosphere". The US seem to be bailing out of the Anglosphere, just as we're bailing out of the EU.

Who have we got to join the dots? Nick Clegg?

[Tubby Isaacs]

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I forgot Canada is being messed around by Trump too.

That's another Anglosphere country. But I'm sure we'll be fine, because Trump hasn't moved a Winston Churchill bust. Maybe Danny Hannan and all didn't intend America to be in the Anglosphere.

[Lang Spoon]

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But it can't be more than bullshit mood music till Britain is thrown out hard from the EU. Trump's empty nonsense about beautiful trade agreements and his little old mum from Skye blah blah might be enough for May to get the usual monsters in the press to big up her nous and regal cunning. Till the real talks start, Trump or no. Then she's fucked.

[Tubby Isaacs]

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“For the past 30 years, we have had a series of trade deals … which have cost us millions of decent-paying jobs and caused a ‘race to the bottom’ which has lowered wages for American workers,” he said.

Bit broadbrush, isn't it?

This is the guy we were supposed to want to win?

[Lang Spoon]

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Take it that's Samders, Tubbs?

[Tubby Isaacs]

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Lang Spoon wrote: But it can't be more than bullshit mood music till Britain is thrown out hard from the EU. Trump's empty nonsense about beautiful trade agreements and his little old mum from Skye blah blah might be enough for May to get the usual monsters in the press to big up her nous and regal cunning. Till the real talks start, Trump or no. Then she's fucked.

The press monsters have a bit of a problem in that their readers think he's a joke and an arsehole, and that his buddy Putin is just an arsehole.

[Tubby Isaacs]

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Lang Spoon wrote: Take it that's Samders, Tubbs?

Sorry, yes. Pretty much puts it on a tee for a Trump to come along, add racism, and clean up.

[NHH]

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Are you serious?

[Tubby Isaacs]

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Yeah. It was a talking point against Clinton, and Trump nicked it. Arguing strongly for protectionism is a sitting duck for having racists come along and trump you. Populism will bite you on the arse.

The US doesn't have many big trade deals, for a start.

https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements

US trade partners

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_partners_of_the_United _States

I can only see Mexico as a poor country with a trade deal doing all that much trade. I can see China with a huge trade surplus to the US- but it's not got a trade deal. Nor's the EU, nor's Japan, nor's India.

Nobody denies there are winners and losers from trade deals, of course, but as GY was saying recently on here, competition under WTO and technology are likely to be more important.

And if you're talking about the rust belt, where this all resonated, I'd suggest the Republican governors they're fond of up there are getting off extremely lightly.

[Tubby Isaacs]

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Australia says "Let's bring China and Indonesia on board".

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jan/24/australia-open-to-china-and-indonesia-joining-tpp-after-us-pulls-out

Good news for American workers, no doubt.

[NHH]

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If you start your politics from the perspective of having to avoid issues of concern on the grounds that the right can pervert what you're saying into something else, you'll have little worth saying and fewer people to give a damn*.

The notion that these deals hurt US workers was a talking point against Clinton and teed it up from Trump is actually bonkers. There's episode of the West Wing where the great wet liberal dream boars take union reps through the 101 course in neoliberalism. There's a scene in Primary Colors about it. It was out there already, already rumbling along.

* a working definition of where the Dems find themselves, I suppose.

[Tubby Isaacs]

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The Dems won the popular vote by 3 million. Clearly, nobody gives a damn. Just like they didn't give a damn when they won the popular vote 5 times out of previous 6 too.

You wouldn't be chucking me in with that West Wing character would you?

Obviously that's it, yeah, I'm saying nobody talk about the Rust Belt's severe problems. What I'm saying is I don't believe that "trade deals" had the effect he says. I mentioned other things that I think were more important. You have to be extremely careful with protectionism. Trump duly swept in and made it really fly.

What if China filled the void in TPP? Does Sanders think that's a good result for American workers and the Rust Belt?

[Amor de Cosmos]

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Canada ready and willing to throw Mexico under the wreckage of the NAFTA bus:

David MacNaughton, Canada’s ambassador to the U.S., says Canada’s priority has to be its trade with America. “It’s essential that we get a better Canada-U.S. trade and economic and security relationship. Whether that’s within an overall NAFTA arrangement, part of that is going to depend on obviously what Mexico’s reaction is to what they put on the table.”

[Hot Pepsi]

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This is a fucking disaster. So much stuff is made of components made on both sides of the US-Mexican border. This screws all of that up.

This will damage both economies, but will be worse for Mexico, leading to more poverty and desperation, which will lead to more migration - wall or no - and probably more fucked-up shit in the drugs-guns trade along the border.

[Amor de Cosmos]

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It would certainly be bad for Mexico, probably for Canada too, though not nearly so much. NAFTA has always been potentially an unbalanced arrangement — which is partly why it was so unpopular here when it was negotiated. It was entirely dependent on good faith by all three parties. If push came to shove, however, it was always obvious the two smaller partners could never seriously oppose the US. Now it seems that's about to happen.

[Hot Pepsi]

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Hopefully, the damage is somewhat reversible over the long run.

What a fucking moron

[E10 Rifle]

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A lot of the talk around trade agreements make assumptions that the other, smaller countries benefit from them.

That's contestable, to say the least, when it comes to Mexico. It was NAFTA that sparked one of Mexico's biggest ever internal revolts.

I'm with NHH really. Obviously, Trump's retreat to crass blanket protectionism will be a disaster, but I don't think the necessary resistance to Trump will get far if it prioritises the sanctification of existing trade deals.

And yeah the Dems won the popular vote this time – but lost thanks to the stupid archaic electoral system that liberals and others have been too reverential to challenge and overturn – but, really, if you don't thrash a candidate as unfit as Trump, then you're doing something wrong.

[Hot Pepsi]

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How are liberals supposed to single-handedly overhaul the constitution?

As far as I can figure out, the existing trade agreements mostly favor capital over labor on both sides of the borders. Mexico has more labor than capital, broadly speaking, so that's how it goes. But if there weren't anything in it for somebody in Mexico, they wouldn't have signed it. Same in Canada.

But having no agreement is worse.

But Trump is so fucking stupid and his support is based on so much basic ignorance - most of his supporters think overall unemployment got worse under Obama, among other nonsense - that this is more like our version of the hard Brexit, but even dumber probably. Most likely, he'll strike a deal that gets concessions that help his companies and those of his friends while selling out industries he doesn't care about, regardless of the long-term consequences.

And there's nothing in his policies or the background of any of his cabinet that suggests he actually wants to help labor. They're all still union-crushers. His plan is to either try to just shame companies into building factories here or, as in the Carrier case, give away massive tax breaks. I read today that over some timeframe I can't recall, the cost of all the public give-always to companies to keep jobs in one county over another - let alone another country - is about $450,000 per job. We could have just given every one of those workers a few years of free education and a pile of cash and saved money compared to bribing companies to stay put. But the former plan would be "socialism" whereas the latter plan has helped get politicians elected.

The corruption runs so deep.

[E10 Rifle]

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anything in it for somebody in Mexico, they wouldn't have signed it

Who do you think those people might be? And wherabouts in Mexico's wealth/power hierarchy might they stand?

Yeah, fair point, there's nothing that can be done to overturn the result, but a sustained electoral reform campaign needs to happen in the US now. The electoral college system is archaic bollocks. Say it loud and often.

And yeah, Trump's economic policies are completely illiterate. That is probably the likeliest thing to prove his downfall.

[Hot Pepsi]

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E10 Rifle wrote:

anything in it for somebody in Mexico, they wouldn't have signed it

Who do you think those people might be? And wherabouts in Mexico's wealth/power hierarchy might they stand?

Yeah, fair point, there's nothing that can be done to overturn the result, but a sustained electoral reform campaign needs to happen in the US now. The electoral college system is archaic bollocks. Say it loud and often.

And yeah, Trump's economic policies are completely illiterate. That is probably the likeliest thing to prove his downfall.

Oh, sure. It most benefits Mexico's wealthiest, I'm sure. It creates lower wage manufacturing jobs in Mexico, which is not nothing, but it also probably crushes a lot of nascent Mexican industries that can't compete with American imports yet, but could have if they'd been given more time to develop. Anyway, that's what I recall from college Econ.

The 2000 election was the first one in a long time where the electoral college and popular vote produced different results. I was born in 1972, so I don't have a lot of experience with presidential elections, but my recollection from the 80s and 90s was that it was considered a remote possibility that nobody was too worried about. And then after 2008, the Democrats got complacent.

So yeah, we need a sustained effort to get rid of it. Same with gerrymandering. I haven't witnessed any constitutional change of that magnitude since I've been paying attention so I don't know how that would go.

[Tubby Isaacs]

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How good the deals are for the poorer partners is a different point. But being aligned under NAFTA to the US has to help competitiveness compared to those on WTO terms.

Trump pulling out of TPP isn't going to help Mexico.

[Vulgarian Visigoth]

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It's a false dichotomy. As usual for the working class everywhere, the Mexican working class faces a choice between a big turd (being a lowly paid industrial workforce) and an even bigger turd (unemployment and poverty). A fair deal for the working class is on even on the cards.

[Tubby Isaacs]

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It's a choice now between having preferential access to big markets, or not. And longer term between being part of a bloc that can negotiate with China on equal terms, or not.

One of those is considerably better for the Mexican working class than the other.

[delicatemoth]

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EPA apparently freezes grants, restricts media contacts

This sounds quite big.

[Ginger Yellow]

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Given Trump's previous pronouncements and his appointments, my baseline assumption is that the EPA is going to do zero enforcement and rip up existing regulations.