Donald Trump’s new big play to gain negotiating strength against China on trade is to announce that he’ll start negotiating to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership. You know, the trade agreement he pulled out of after calling it a “rape of our country.” There are a few complications here.
Trump insists, via Twitter, that he “Would only join TPP if the deal were substantially better than the deal offered to Pres. Obama,” but let’s face it: all that means is that if he joined TPP he’d claim it was substantially better regardless of reality. Also, is this a real thing Trump is planning, or is it one of those things he says on impulse to derail a different problematic story? According to new economic adviser Larry Kudlow:
“There’s out of the blue, and there’s, I guess, out of the dark, navy blue,” Mr. Kudlow said. This, he said, was “dark, navy blue.”
That means you can’t bet against Trump turning around and next week denying that he ever said anything about joining TPP. And one reason he might deny it is because the idea looks set to fail, or at least be more complicated than Donald Trump is willing to get into:
Officials in Japan, Australia and New Zealand reacted coolly on Friday to Mr. Trump’s remarks that he would be interested in joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership after rejecting it so publicly just a year ago. While the United States would significantly bolster the pact if it signed up, its entry would require intense negotiations — and current members will expect significant concessions from the American side. [...]
“We’ve got a deal” already, said Steven Ciobo, Australia’s trade minister, who added, “I can’t see that all being thrown open to appease the United States.”
Here’s the bright side possibility:
Negotiating a new pact could take years. Still, rekindling negotiations could make it hard for China to play off the United States against its allies by promising to shift business from one to another if a trade war breaks out. It could be a way to assuage American farmers and businesses hurt by Chinese tariffs by assuring robust markets for American products in countries that signed onto the deal, like Japan, Australia and South Korea. It would give the pact a great deal more heft and help position it as an economic counterweight to China, which increasingly dominates the Asia-Pacific region.
Years? So basically, it’s as likely that Trump gets angry when he’s not welcomed with open arms and starts rage-tweeting against Australia and Japan as it is that he successfully leverages the TPP against China, but he might at least be able to get a short-term cooldown in his war of tariff threats.