President Donald Trump has moved quickly against free-trade deals that he says are hurting American workers — but in the process he risks dismantling a key pillar of US national security.
In his first week on the job, Trump has withdrawn the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact and called for the North American Free Trade Agreement to be renegotiated and perhaps abandoned.
Amid anger over job losses and concerns about sovereignty that helped fuel Trump’s victory, lawmakers in districts hurt by trade and labor unions celebrated the news.
But beyond the economic consequences — which many TPP proponents argue will be negative for the US — the moves shake the foundations of the US global security architecture. American policy dating back to WWII has used multilateral trade agreements as a tool to strengthen US security and advance US leadership around the world.
“That’s been the case with US trade policy for the entire post-war period,” said Fred Bergsten, founding director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, speaking of agreements like NAFTA and TPP. “So when you undo them, as Trump could do, you are really striking a major blow against fundamental US national security interests.”
Bergsten and others also said that the TPP withdrawal clears the way for China to push for greater dominance in Asia. “The Chinese could not have a greater gift than the one Trump has given them,” Bergsten said. Trump “just handed it over on a silver platter and they’ll sit back and rake it in.”
While there’s a price tag for the economic cost of withdrawal, according to Bergsten, “the national security costs of turning leadership of that region over to your chief rival are really incalculable.”
As a US network in Asia, the TPP would have created “a bulwark against China,” he said, echoing others who argue that withdrawal impacts the US ability to lead on issues like the South China Sea, where Beijing makes territorial claims, freedom of navigation and values of human rights, democracy and freedom.
Harry Kazianis, director of Defense Studies at the Center for the National Interest, said that “we must remember, TPP, at its core, was never about trade.” It’s core goal, Kazianis said, was to create a deal of “real strategic” importance.
Consumer and advocacy groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an internet freedom group, complained that the deal was being negotiated behind closed doors and was likely to benefit multinational companies more than ordinary people. And lawmakers such as Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders rallied people against a “fast-track” procedure that barred Congress from amending the deal.
Backers of Trump’s approach on trade primarily focus on the economic effects, arguing that having a robust American workforce and GDP will project US strength internationally.
Labor unions and lawmakers focused on domestic issues welcomed the idea of a NAFTA rewrite and praised the TPP move. The AFL-CIO tweeted that the TPP cancelation was a “good first step toward building trade policies that benefit working people.” Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat, wrote Trump on Tuesday saying she supported a new approach to trade deals.
Trump White House press secretary Sean Spicer, speaking in a January 23 press briefing about the TPP, saying, “this type of multinational agreement is not in our best interest.”
But other lawmakers and analysts contended that the reorientation on trade will have both negative strategic and economic impact. Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona called the TPP withdrawal “a serious mistake that will have lasting consequences for America’s economy and our strategic position in the Asia-Pacific region.”
Walter Lohman, director of the Asian Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation, a think tank closely aligned with Vice President Mike Pence, said the US can’t simply walk away from the TPP.
“It would be a mistake not to have a Plan B,” Lohman said. “We need to have a Plan B, some sort of approach that would demonstrate our interest in the region.”
There is broad agreement, however, that the 23-year-old NAFTA needs updating. It’s one of the issues discussed by a Mexican delegation that visited Washington Wednesday to discuss immigration, trade and security ahead of a visit by President Enrique Peña Nieto.
NAFTA was written “before we had to worry about intellectual property protections, e-commerce, a whole variety of issues that didn’t exist,” said Jason Marczak of the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arst Latin America Center. That said, he added that “a withdrawal from the trade pact doesn’t benefit American workers or US security” and neither does tension with Mexico.
Trump’s rhetoric about Mexico could cause problems for security cooperation, Marczak said, recalling the President’s campaign description of Mexican immigrants as “rapists.” Mexico and the US share intelligence and cooperate closely on border security. Mexico also aggressively policies its own southern border to stop Central American migrants headed for the US.
Security was a driving argument for NAFTA in the early 1990s, a time when Mexico was an unstable “one-party authoritarian state,” Bergsten said. The core idea, then as now, is that trade agreements strengthen and stabilize countries — and increase US influence.
The former leader of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, made that argument to a newly inaugurated President Barack Obama in 2009 shortly before his first trip to Asia.
“The 21st century will be a contest for supremacy in the Pacific because that’s where the growth will be,” Lee said during his visit. “If you do not hold your ground in the Pacific, you cannot be a world leader.”
Soon after, Obama announced the US would refocus on TPP talks started under his predecessor, despite disparaging NAFTA on the campaign trail. He faced strong opposition to TPP in Congress, so much so that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Trump shouldn’t take credit for withdrawing from the deal.
“The Trans-Pacific Partnership was dead long before President Trump took office,” Schumer said Monday.
Lohman of the Heritage Foundation said he was looking at the situation “practically: It’s done, let’s move forward, let’s find a new way to open up markets and establish rules.” One option, he said, is to work with countries bilaterally. “It may be the only game in town.”
The TPP was a central US weapon in a contest between Washington and Beijing to determine the economic architecture and standards in Asia, with the US advocating for a rules-based, transparent system. In that respect, the pact was different than other Asian multilateral groups the US belongs to because it established US norms and standards for the region.
“It’s a huge missed opportunity and a huge blow to our credibility in Asia and beyond,” said Matthew Goodman, a senior advisor for Asian economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Strategically, we’ve been in Asia for 75 years, providing stability, predictability and enabling prosperity, keeping the peace and allowing people to trade, now people are saying, ‘Are we reliable?’ ” Goodman said. “That’s the strategic problem of pulling out of TPP.”