Trump had a chance to gain greater leverage over China but blew it

[transporter]

Not that this should come as any surprise...on so many levels. The most obvious one is that Trump doesn't know what he is doing (in other words inept and incompetent). Trump was and continues to be driven more by a personal vendetta against Obama and/or anyone who he perceives has crossed him rather than by the actual responsibility of his job to work for the people of the US. No surprise that Trump's self proclaimed negotiating skills are really non-existent.

Trump had a chance to gain greater leverage over China but blew it

Last spring a senior US executive complained to a government official about President Donald Trump’s threat to impose wide-ranging tariffs on imports from China in retaliation for allegedly unfair trade practices.

The executive argued that the Trump administration’s fixation on balanced goods trade between the world’s two largest economies as an end in itself was economically pointless. It ignored America’s service sector surplus with China, while tariffs would disrupt global supply chains and constitute a tax on US companies and their customers.

Without disagreeing, the official had a pointed response: what leverage would the executive use to change Chinese approaches that have frustrated US businesses for decades, from forced technology transfers to state-directed industrial policies? If nothing else, he argued, Mr Trump’s tariff threat had knocked Beijing off balance and forced it to enter a comprehensive trade negotiation with more urgency than at any point since it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.

The executive had a three-letter answer: TPP, referring to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact from which the US withdrew on Mr Trump’s first day in office. The exchange highlights the fundamental disconnect between American business and Mr Trump’s China trade policy. While US multinationals support the president’s aim, they hate how he is trying to achieve it.

...

Perhaps US companies’ biggest disappointment is that the trade deal taking shape, according to people briefed on the negotiations, will be very similar to the bilateral investment treaty the Obama administration was close to reaching in late 2016.

As imperfect as the Obama treaty may have been, it was supposed to coincide with the launch of the TPP, joining the US and 11 other Pacific nations but excluding China. The strategic challenge posed by the TPP, its backers believe, would have been a far more effective way of convincing Beijing to embrace substantive financial and economic reforms than trying to bludgeon a fiercely nationalistic regime into submission with tariffs.

Instead, Mr Trump withdrew from the TPP and US business is counting the cost in terms of lost market share in Japan. For US multinationals, the leverage Mr Trump has been seeking over China through tariffs was there all along in the form of the TPP. But sadly for them, he threw it away.

 

[PsyOps]

 

[Yooper]

From the original poster's quoted portion of the Financial Times article:

"As imperfect as the Obama treaty may have been, it was supposed to coincide with the launch of the TPP, joining the US and 11 other Pacific nations but excluding China. The strategic challenge posed by the TPP, its backers believe, would have been a far more effective way of convincing Beijing to embrace substantive financial and economic reforms than trying to bludgeon a fiercely nationalistic regime into submission with tariffs."

Read it and be amazed how full of OPINION this paragraph is. That the thread's original poster sees it as significant proof of Trump's incompetency is enough to tell you - gentle reader - that this post is yet another anti-Trump rant (rather than anything substantive and worthy of serious back & forth).

To remind ourselves, what we have here is an op-ed. Where, to remind ourselves just once more, "op" stands for "opinion."

--- End of line (MCP)

 

[TCROW]

To remind ourselves, what we have here is an op-ed. Where, to remind ourselves just once more, "op" stands for "opinion."

--- End of line (MCP)

Actually it doesn’t. It stands for “opposite” as in “opposite the editorial page.”

It certainly is opinion, but that’s not the genesis of the “op” in “op-ed”.

 

[TCROW]

Otherwise, not a badly written piece but the thinking has advanced on this. On the one hand, this was one of the very best chances at containing China in pac rim trade, and we had partners. But certainly, China would have figured out ways to countenance this and end around the TPP if it turned out to be onerous. So since the intent was to be onerous on China, plan for success and assume they will deploy countermeasures. So maybe trump was right to pull out.

Bernie was against this in the run-up to the last election, likely because he didn’t think it went far enough. Hilary was against it too, likely for far different reasons.