White House gives up on passing the TPP

Eight years in the making, the giant Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal between Australia, the United States and 10 other regional powers is as good as dead after the Obama administration walked away from its plan to put it before the “lame duck” Congress ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration as president.

Republican congressional leaders had made clear that they wouldn’t consider the 12-nation Pacific trade deal in the remainder of President Barack Obama’s term, the Wall Street Journal quoted us officials as saying, as Trump had stood against the deal.

US President Barack Hussein Obama’s administration suspended its efforts to win congressional approval for his Asian free-trade deal before President Elect Donald Trump takes office saying that TPP’s fate was now up to Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers.

“As Trump adapts to being a president and no longer a combative outsider pushing into the United States political system, he may mallow and may find that after all, selective free trade agreements are a jolly good thing”.

In Peru, Obama will explain to other TPP nations the reasons for the USA government’s failure and the suspensions of its efforts to win congressional approval for the deal.

Trump, long a critic of free trade agreements – though a professed supporter of free trade – slammed TPP frequently on the campaign trail. Japan’s House of Representatives this week voted to ratify TPP.

“If the next president wants to negotiate a trade agreement, he has the opportunity to do that and to send it up”, McConnell said.

The Wall Street Journal, for example, reported that the deal “effectively died Friday, as Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress told the White House they won’t advance it in the election’s aftermath, and Obama administration officials acknowledged it has no way forward now”.

“There is no way to fix the TPP”, Trump said in a June economic address.

The US-led TPP excluded major world economies like China and India.

Protestors wave placards at a rally against the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) just days before parliament is due to open a debate on the free trade pact in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Jan. 23, 2016.

But opponents of the deal said it does not do enough to protect workers from foreign competition and could allow foreign countries to sue for exemptions to various U.S. trading rules.

Still, Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune was cautious about the news and argued that Trump’s opposition to the TPP is based on a different set of values than his group holds.

President-elect Donald Trump walks with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Capitol Hill. “I’m one of them”, he said.

It’s unclear whether a Trump presidency will resume negotiations on the TPP and TTIP or it will throw away these two ambitious trade deals.