RIP TPP: ‘Obama kept Americans in dark on major trade deal’
RT.com
24 Jan, 2017
We don’t know a lot about it, but Obama pushed it as “the most progressive trade deal in US history,” publisher of Trends Journal Gerald Celente told RT. RT America’s Ed Shultz, and Jack Rasmus, Professor of Political Economy, also provided comments.
US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. TPP is a free trade agreement between America and the Asia Pacific region.
It was due to cover 800 million people and encompass 40 percent of the global economy. However, the proposed agreement, much of which was negotiated in secret behind closed doors, was met with tremendous public resistance in several countries.
‘New level of protectionism’
Ed Shultz, RT America host
RT: Why should people care about this decision? Is this a big surprise or not?
Ed Shultz: Well, this underscores what Donald Trump has said all along – that he is going to protect American jobs. This puts the US in a position of a level of protectionism that we haven’t seen for a long time. The fact is that he believed that this was a race to the bottom; that American workers would be competing against workforces in Vietnam and Brunei to the tune of 54 cents an hour.
There has already been a reaction on Capitol Hill – Bernie Sanders has reached out and said that this is a great move, saying that he is glad that this deal is finally dead. This goes against the millions upon millions of dollars that were spent by Wall Street lobbyists to try to get this deal through the Congress, and they couldn’t get it done. People within the Obama party, the Democratic Party were not on board with him: Elizabeth Warren was against it; Chuck Schumer was against it; Bernie Sanders moved Hillary Clinton on this issue, which only emboldened Donald Trump to talk about it more on the campaign trail.
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