US President-elect Donald Trump said late last month that he will start the US withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and cancel what he describes as “job-killing” regulations on energy production during his first 100 days in office.
In a video released to the media, he included a proposal that “for every one new regulation, two old regulations must be eliminated. Brian Jackson, a China specialist at consultancy IHS Global Insight, said: “If the TPP fails, it will be a huge win for China, politically and economically.
“On the political side, TPP negotiations took years and plenty of political capital in partner countries, so its failure would create a credibility gap. Economically, it will give China a stronger negotiating position as a major alternative source of demand.”
Mr Trump went on to say that his agenda will be based on “a simple core principle: putting America first, whether it is producing steel or building cars”.
He also vowed to “cancel regulations on shale production, ‘clean coal’ and other energy sources, develop a plan to secure vital infrastructure from cyber attacks and investigate all abuses of visa programmes that undercut the American worker”.
Meanwhile, a recent summit of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) organisation in Lima heard President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski urge the region’s leaders to robustly defend free trade.
“It is fundamental that world trade grows again and protectionism is defeated. Anyone who wants to promote protectionism should read an economic history of the 1930s.”
US Trade Representative Michael Froman sought to assure APEC — a free-trade club founded in 1989 that represents nearly 40% of the world’s population and nearly 60% of the global economy — that “American core interests don’t change from administration to administration”.
Robert Lawrence, a trade expert at Harvard University, said: “A protectionist turn for the USA would cause huge adjustment difficulties for countries that have grown through trade.
“It would be hugely disruptive for the world, and I do not think that the trade part of Donald Trump’s programme is going to do much for the American workers who he claims to want to help.”