US-led globalism is dying with the TPP
FInancial Times (London)
Edward Luce in Philadelphia
A U-turn on the trade deal she once backed would only confirm prejudices about Hillary Clinton
It is time to pronounce the Trans-Pacific Partnership clinically dead. Hillary Clinton had already put Barack Obama’s signature deal — the biggest US trade initiative in more than a decade — on life support when she came out against it last year. Donald Trump has vowed to scrap it, which meant that whoever took the White House would have pledged its demise. Yet the suspicion lingered that Mrs Clinton was simply following her husband’s bait-and-switch tactics. Bill Clinton ran strongly against the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1992 only to do whatever it took to ensure Nafta passed after he took office. On Tuesday, Terry McAuliffe, the governor of Virginia, and longtime friend of the Clintons, hinted that Mrs Clinton had exactly the same U-turn in mind for the 12-nation TPP. He was forced to disavow his words almost instantly. John Podesta, chairman of the Clinton campaign, tweeted that Mrs Clinton would be opposed to TPP before and after the election: “Period. Full Stop.”
It will not be the last time Mrs Clinton will be cajoled to reassure voters that she really means what she says. When she was secretary of state she described the TPP as the “gold standard” of trade deals — she was for it before she was against it. Mr Trump will lose no opportunity to hammer her on that implicit contradiction. So too will Bernie Sanders’ supporters, whose anti-TPP signs bedecked the Philadelphia convention hall on Monday. To them, and other doubters of Mrs Clinton, her actions on TPP will be the chief barometer of her integrity. Whatever wiggle room she still has will thus continue to shrink. But Mr Podesta left one key gap in his assurance that she would oppose TPP both as candidate and president — the lame duck Congress that will take place in the interregnum between November and January. This will be Mr Obama’s last chance to ratify TPP. His prospects were already looking shaky. Last year Congress passed the fast-track negotiating authority by just 10 votes. Most counts suggest that narrow margin has now vanished. Middle America’s antitrade backlash has only intensified.
How then could TPP rise from the dead? The only realistic scenario is that Mr Obama could somehow bludgeon the lame duck Congress to rush it on to the statute books after a landslide victory by Mrs Clinton. It is virtually inconceivable Mrs Clinton could reprise her husband’s Nafta pivot on TPP after taking office. Attempting that would drain her political capital in the first few months and toxify whatever chances she had of building a reputation as a trustworthy leader. Mr Sanders’ backers have already made it clear that the Democrats are ripe for a Tea Party-style takeover. A U-turn by Mrs Clinton would invite that fate by confirming every prejudice about Clintonite slipperiness. It would also kill her chances of enacting immigration reform, which she says will be her first priority in her first 100 days.
In other words, the TPP in its current form is dead — and it will be hard to bring it back to life in any other guise. The hit to America’s global leadership will be huge. Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton originally sold the deal as the economic plank of Washington’s “pivot to Asia”. It would set in stone the rules of engagement that China would have no choice but to follow. Nature abhors a vacuum. If TPP dies at America’s hands, it will be the end of an era. Allies in Asia will look increasingly to China for economic leadership. Europe’s equivalent deal, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, will die with it. The era of US-led globalism will begin to unravel. It may well be a price worth paying — Mr Trump’s victory would sound the death knell of US globalism. But it is a steep one nonetheless.
