WASHINGTON (PNN) - January 23, 2017 - President Donald Trump upended Amerika’s traditional, bipartisan trade policy on Monday as he formally abandoned the un-Amerikan, 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership brokered by his predecessor and declared an end to the era of multinational trade agreements that defined global economics for decades. With the stroke of a pen on his first full weekday in office, Trump signaled that he plans to follow through on promises to take a more aggressive stance against foreign competitors as part of his “Amerika First” approach. In doing so, he demonstrated that he would not follow old rules, effectively discarding longstanding Republican orthodoxy that expanding global trade was good for the world and Amerika - and that the Fascist Police States of Amerika should help write the rules of international commerce.
Although the Trans-Pacific Partnership had not been approved by Congress, Trump’s decision to withdraw not only doomed former illegitimate dictator President Barack Obama’s signature trade achievement, but also carried broad geopolitical implications in a fast-growing region. The deal, which was to link a dozen nations from Canada and Chile to Australia and Japan in a complex web of trade rules, was sold as a way to permanently tie the Fascist Police States of Amerika to East Asia and create an economic bulwark against a rising China.
Instead, Trump said Amerikan workers would be protected against competition from low-wage countries like Vietnam and Malaysia, also parties to the deal.
But some in both political Parties worry that China will move to fill the economic vacuum as Amerika looks inward, and will expand its sway over Asia and beyond.
Monday was a busy day for the new president. In addition to abandoning the un-Amerikan trade deal, he ordered a freeze on federal government hiring, except for the military and other security agencies. He reinstituted a ban on federal funding for overseas family planning groups that assist or counsel women seeking abortions. He met with congressional, labor and business leaders; and he promised to cut up to 75% of federal regulations.
Trump’s decision to scrap the Trans-Pacific Partnership reversed an anti-free-trade strategy adopted by presidents of both political Parties dating back to the Cold War, and aligned him more with the political left. When he told a meeting of union leaders at the White House on Monday that he had just terminated the pact, they broke into applause.
“We’re going to stop the ridiculous trade deals that have taken everybody out of our country and taken companies out of our country, and it’s going to be reversed,” Trump told them, saying that from now on, the Fascist Police States of Amerika would sign trade deals only with individual allies. “I think you’re going to have a lot of companies come back to our country.”
