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Comment by Bluestrike2 | Hacker News Reader

It will take decades to undo the damage from this latest bout of isolationism and protectionism. There was a wealth of FUD surrounding TPP, obscuring the benefits and over-inflating the effects of the more controversial issues like intellectual property rules. A number of TPP criticisms would lead one to believe that intellectual property rules were the main element of the agreement.

Instead of pushing to deal with those criticisms, the entire deal gets scrapped. And along with it, we now have an isolationist push against NAFTA and international trade in general. It'll be interesting to see the damage that's wrought in a vain attempt to somehow stack the deck in favor of "America First."

Sadly, it'll take much longer to fix than it did to screw up in the first place.

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In order from best to worst, the possible outcomes were:

1. Fix the many problems with TPP, then pass it

2. Scrap TPP entirely

3. Pass TPP as it was

You say "Instead of pushing to deal with those criticisms, the entire deal gets scrapped.", but this is the real FUD. There was a huge outcry to fix TPP's problems-- that got completely ignored by the USTR, which didn't even try to pretend it had the people's interests in mind. If there were any chance that public criticism of TPP actually could have improved it, I would've preferred that solution, but it was made plain from the beginning that that wasn't going to happen and that we were not welcome at the discussion table.

> Sadly, it'll take much longer to fix than it did to screw up in the first place.

Agreed. The first step, and the hardest, will be for the people pushing for trade deals to start giving a shit about anyone other than corporations and billionaires. Reconciliation and public approval of trade deals can come after that

I think your ordering is right. I wish there was more information to completely pervasively argue it...

Scrapping it can be step one of fixing it, or at least a future iteration that probably won't be called the same thing. Demonstrating that the people who weren't invited to the table do in fact have the power to scrap the treaty means next time they'll be at the table, or there won't be a next time.

Alternatively, these countries will sign trade deals with China instead with fewer worker protections and be required to accept China's territory claims as a consequence. China will grow its economic hegemony over other countries, while the US will be ignored outside of military actions.

http://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/china-backed-rcep-t...

China is an economic house of cards. The best course of action is just to wait it out.

I have to admit I can not fathom the game theory models that some of you seem to be approaching this problem with. Embrace your cynicism, but play it out all the way. People are greedy. Other people in the world want the money that the United States has. This gives the US leverage and power. The United States does not have all the power, but neither does China; that's just the same error firing in a different direction. There is no scenario where the world just shrugs its shoulders and says "Gee golly, I guess I can't even try to have that American money because the US didn't sign this one treaty and that was the only way that could ever happen".

I'm also not saying everything will necessarily be perfectly peachy, because that's also just the same error firing in a different direction as thinking that it's all catastrophe. It's mostly about fiddling around the margins, not massive binary movements. What will really happen is that some things will be better for the US, some things will be worse, and which one you think dominates will depend upon your values.

China is pushing trade deals through quickly. The US just wasted 8 years of those eleven countries' time and is strongly signalling protectionism.

The US and the basket of Western interests it represents is in a tug of war with China over how well their businesses can compete within SE Asia/Japan. This is why you'll see the phrase "regulatory harmonization" thrown around a lot; China does business by one playbook, the West does it by another, and whosever playbook all the countries in the middle choose to read from will have lower entry barriers to their markets.

> There was a wealth of FUD surrounding TPP, obscuring the benefits and over-inflating the effects of the more controversial issues like intellectual property rules. A number of TPP criticisms would lead one to believe that intellectual property rules were the main element of the agreement.

If it had such incredible benefits, perhaps people should have talked about those. Ideally with quotes of the text, and discussions about the deltas to the current situation. And even then, that's an argument for passing the good provisions, not for accepting a package deal containing numerous downsides. Of course, all of that becomes much harder to do while trying to operate in secret.

"If it had such incredible benefits, perhaps people should have talked about those."

The problem was that nobody saw any need to make the case to the people. They thought they were in charge, and the people had to remind them otherwise.

Exactly. Meanwhile, the people opposed to it communicated at length, in detail, with supporting evidence and quotes.

Here you go:

1. Geopolitical influence. The Western world, lead by the USA, wants to dictate terms of trade in the Pacific before China can. This means laying the groundwork for the environments that western businesses and investors are comfortable with. US investors would be less likely to invest in Malaysia if Malaysia was instead following China's lead on IP protections.

2. Stabilizing of third world countries. By providing the frameworks mentioned above, third world countries take a few steps towards providing open and inclusive economies, and the benefits of the trade deal ensure that their leaders are less likely to take steps that would sow uncertainty in their own economies. Also countries with trade agreements are far less likely to go to war with each other. This was one of the main benefits of NAFTA with Mexico too.

3. Straight growth benefits. Every country is predicted to get some additional GDP growth, though large and already liberalised countries like the US won't see too much. On the other hand, poorer countries like Vietnam are predicted to get a staggering 11% extra GDP growth. That's amazing, and will lead to vastly reduced poverty in SE Asia.

4. It includes a glorious fuck you to tobacco companies. Seriously, it blocks them from using ISDS at all, and it sent so many lobbyists into a fit when it was released.

The time for such explanations was long ago, back when TPP was being proposed, and people were providing detailed arguments against it.

I won't claim any kind of expertise on the non-tech-related effects of TPP; I'm not an expert in international trade.

With respect to copyright, patent, and trademarks, however: I really don't care about "investors" who want to make other countries follow more draconian regimes in those areas. There's a happy medium between "zero acknowledgement of foreign copyrights at all" and "ridiculously excessive copyright laws"; ditto for patents and trademarks. TPP just directly exported the US's ludicrously excessive copyright, patent, and trademark laws, complete with DMCA-like provisions and criminal (not just civil) penalties. Those terms at a minimum needed fixing, and I think the people arguing against TPP in its current form on those grounds alone were right to do so.

Agreed. The problems with selling trade agreements is that the benefits (while real) are diffuse while the drawbacks are felt more severely by a small part of the population. It's entirely rational for US manufacturers to be against trade deals, and indeed a lot of such people have a lot at stake. However the benefits of cheaper goods while shared by vastly more people (including those not yet entering the workforce) is harder to notice.

With some exceptions (biologics) you're right on copyright, and I'd agree. However this only tempers my support of what I consider to be an important geopolitical move.

>Also countries with trade agreements are far less likely to go to war with each other. This was one of the main benefits of NAFTA with Mexico too.

I'm not well versed in the details of NAFTA but are you contending that one of it's main benefits was preventing a war between the US and Mexico?

Not war, per se, but rather the stability the point makes more generally. It's easy to look at Mexico and see a country impoverished and rife with corruption, but the pressures put on it by NAFTA have seen it make some impressive moves over the last 30 years. It has the added benefit of reducing immigration incentives (which seem to preoccupy a lot of Americans these days).

Yes, but the issue was, that it was to be taken as either all or none, and the intellectual property section, as per what was leaked on wikileaks was kind of ridiculous.

The ISDS provisions were also very controversial.

Why? I think ISDS is an excellent mechanism to subjugate developing countries' governments (I know this sounds like sarcasm, but I think that's the purpose). And the issues regarding cigarettes have been resolved in favor of government regulation of cigarettes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Morris_v._Uruguay

"It will take decades to undo the damage from this latest bout of isolationism and protectionism."

I take issue with the assumption that these two things are either equal or synonymous, and that the latter has or will cause damage. To boil the argument down, national sovereignty is the real issue at hand, and there is plenty of nuance to be had in the discussion. Such flippant dismissal of protectionism as bad and equating it with isolationism reeks of irrationality and a lack of understanding of the bigger geopolitical and geoeconomic picture.

It's a position I see taken very often these days, but it's not one that stands up to scrutiny in my experience. I would like to say I do understand where it comes from though. It's easy to assume protectionism = isolationism, and therefor rejection of any globally focused trade agreement ergo becomes another form of isolationism, and hence from that perspective it makes sense, but even a base line academic analysis would show much more room for nuanced discussion of the subject.

Of course, that's assuming that your goal is debate or discussion conducive to finding truth in the first place, which I suspect isn't the case.

Not to mention the idea that isolation in a country as large as the US is kind of irrelevant, where goddamn near every natural resource that is required is available domestically

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