#TheHindu #Editorial Two sides of an ambitious deal

October 10, 2015    

The Trans-Pacific Partnership pact reached this week between the United States and 11 Pacific Rim nations including Canada and Japan, has raised both hopes and concerns. The commercial value of the deal, when it is approved, is immense, tying together as it does almost 40 per cent of the world’s GDP. It seeks to eliminate or reduce about 18,000 tariff and non-tariff barriers. Its supporters, including President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, say the pact would boost growth in the U.S. as well as the Asian economies. But it faces opposition inside and outside the U.S. Several members of Mr. Obama’s Democratic Party oppose the deal, saying it would only help American companies send jobs abroad. Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders calls it a “trade disaster”. Critics in other countries say it would benefit large corporations, particularly American big pharma, with the common people at the receiving end. Health advocacy groups say it would reduce access to generic medicines in developing countries; Internet freedom campaigners see it as a big threat.

Mr. Obama has made the TPP the centrepiece of his trade and foreign policies, and seems determined to push it in Congress and persuade other governments to accept it. The strategic potential of the deal is clear. The U.S. started pushing for a Pacific free trade agreement at a time China was emerging as an economic super power in the region. Defending the accord, Mr. Obama said: “We can’t let countries like China write the rules of the global economy. We should write those rules, opening new markets to American products”. The strategic ambitions of the U.S. are clear. Traditionally, the U.S. has tried to isolate its enemies and integrate allies with its own worldview. With Beijing it couldn’t do either. China is now the world’s second largest economy, which has invested trillions of dollars in U.S. treasury bonds; “isolating” such an economy is next to impossible. Though the U.S. reversed its hostile China policy in 1972 in order to exploit internal rivalries in the communist bloc, China never became a U.S. ally. And the chasm only widened after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now, with China emerging as an economic powerhouse with new institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in place, the U.S. is trying to form a grand alliance that would shore up its influence in Asia. But will this strategic push be at the expense of its own workers, and the poor in the developing world? If it is, as economists such as Joseph Stiglitz have pointed out, the TPP would hardly meet either its declared commercial goals or its undeclared strategic ambitions, and could turn counterproductive.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

#TheHindu #Editorial Two sides of an ambitious deal 4.5 5 Yateendra sahu October 10, 2015 The Trans-Pacific Partnership pact reached this week between the United States and 11 Pacific Rim nations including Canada and Japan, has r...


Related Post:

  • #TheHindu #Editorial Between prurience and pragmatism
    The government’s flip-flop on the issue of banning websites that carry pornographic content highlights both policy confusion and the difficulty involved in having a policy on it. In its zeal to address the concerns of the Supreme Court over the mena… Read More
  • #TheHindu #Editorial The meaning of cheaper oil
    World oil prices, already lower than they have been in six months, are not likely to recover anytime soon, going by market conditions. A further increase in supply, compounding the current glut, and a parallel contraction in demand in the major cons… Read More
  • #TheHindu #Editorial Vengeance in Bangladesh
    Niloy Chatterjee Neel is the latest victim of a vicious campaign against secular bloggers in Bangladesh. His murder by machete-wielding men at his house in Dhaka underscores the grave dangers that writers critical of extremism and religious intoleran… Read More
  • #TheHindu #Editorial Jihadist-military project at work
    Wednesday’s terror strike in Udhampur by militants from Pakistan was clearly aimed at provoking India. It came barely 10 days after a police station in Gurdaspur in Punjab was attacked, again by militants from Pakistan. This time India captured one … Read More
  • #TheHindu #Editorial Give debate a chance
    The boycott of Parliament by the leading opposition party during the current session has denied the nation of some meaningful debates over the issues that have precipitated its confrontation with the government, besides holding up critical pieces of… Read More
Load comments

No comments:

Post a Comment