Why TPP Is High Risk, Low Reward (Facts, facts, facts)
U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter is a very smart man who’s at home in the military-industrial complex, but he’s not very sharp on trade issues. Case in point: Carter’s recent claim in a speech at the start of his Asia trip: “We already see countries in the region trying to carve up these markets.”
That was Carter’s attempt to show his support of the Obama administration’s big push to obtain fast-track authority to win eventual passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership — the implication being that without TPP, America will lose ground in Asia. But all Carter did was show that when it comes to economics, he’s stuck in an earlier century.
And with such scare talk, he and the administration are vastly overstating the benefits of TPP, which risks exacerbating America’s already tense relationship with China.
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But it doesn’t work that way with trade. There are no spheres of influence, there’s no winner-take-all game. In contrast to colonial-era territorial acquisition and mercantilism, the possibilities of who can trade with whom are, for all practical purposes, nearly endless. TPP will not provide American ownership of markets in the countries involved, nor will it cede that ownership to any other country.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/05/why-tpp-is-high-risk-low-reward-117658.html#ixzz3ZM5ghxlL
Some of the facts in the article:
The U.S. has fta pacts with 6 of the 11 TPP nations
Japan's average tariff is 1.2%
Malaysia's GDP is smaller than Marylands.
The average annual income in Vietnam is $1,740