On The Verge Of 2 Trade Deals That Could Transform The US Economy KATI SUOMINEN, ZOCALO PUBLIC SQUARE DEC. 29, 2014, 11:28 AM 166,034 150 FACEBOOK LINKEDIN TWITTER GOOGLE+ PRINT EMAIL obama ebola AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais See Also The Yes-We-Can President Faces A Twilight Of Maybes Here Are 3 Big Policy Changes In US-Cuba Relations Obama Just Handed Hillary Clinton A Huge Gift Battered by crises and maligned by critics, globalization is regaining momentum. And this is good news for America’s global leadership. Negotiations for an ambitious Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal involving a dozen countries from Asia and the Americas are quietly nearing the finishing line. Another historic agreement, the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the United States and the European Union, also shows signs of becoming a reality. Not long ago, the idea that two landmark U.S.-centered trade deals could be the pillars of President Obama’s foreign policy legacy would have seemed laughable. As a presidential candidate in 2008, Obama was a trade skeptic, painting deals like NAFTA as job-killers, which played well with unions weary of import surges from China. Once in office, however, Obama warmed to trade expansion as presidents tend to do, given the dependence of the American economy and jobs on exports and global supply chains. In 2010, Obama issued a call to double U.S. exports, with trade deals forming part of the package–only now they were described as “partnerships” that would open new markets to American businesses big and small, rather than “free trade agreements” associated, even if falsely, in the public’s mind with offshoring and job losses. While big business spearheads the trade lobby, “Main Street” small businesses stand to gain from greater access to foreign markets and the harmonizing of product standards and regulations across borders. As an economist who has for years worked to advance free trade in both the public and private sector, I could not be more elated by the prospect that these major deals now look achievable. For more than a decade, ambitious global efforts to liberalize cross-border trade and investment had stalled. TPP Kevin Lamarque/Reuters U.S. President Barack Obama (C) meets with the leaders of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) countries in Beijing November 10, 2014. The promise of the Uruguay Round of negotiations, which in 1994 produced the crown jewel of the global trading system, the World Trade Organization, appeared to have been lost. The Doha Round–the multilateral talks that were supposed to expand on the Uruguay Round’s gains–have been going on for 13 years, with few tangible results because of disagreements between emerging markets such as Brazil and India (who resist opening their markets to foreign manufactured products and services) and the U.S. and Europe, which are reluctant to free their agricultural markets. With any one of the WTO’s 160 member nations able to scuttle any global agreement, countries have turned to regional trade agreements or country-to-country pacts as alternatives. Since the United States, Canada, and Mexico launched the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) two decades ago, no fewer than 400 trade deals have been concluded or are under negotiation, coupling such players as Chile and China, Japan and Mexico, and the United States and Singapore, to name a few. Such deals are easier to get done than a universal WTO deal. They also tend to go deeper than WTO efforts, pioneering in the regulation of such matters as e-commerce, intellectual property, and state-owned enterprises. But for globalizing companies, they also create tremendous new complexity–a patchwork of rules and standards that differ from one market to the next. The two trans-oceanic pacts that would link us to Asia and Europe, though, would resurrect the momentum for a more comprehensive global agreement. They would also deliver considerable economic benefits. The Trans-Pacific deal (TPP) will boost U.S. annual gains by $77 billion, and Japan’s by $104 billion. The TTIP deal, by integrating markets in the U.S. and the EU, would generate $130 billion annually in economic gains for the United States, and $162 billion for Europe. Read more: zocalopublicsquare.org/2014/12/29/will-globalization-be-obamas-greatest-foreign-policy-legacy/ideas/nexus/#ixzz3NQ4lUO1u
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 21:38:36 +0000
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