Subject: Re: Called this one
BTW, China has applied to be part of the TPP. Things Dope ignores:

Forbes:
Removing the United States from the Asia-Pacific trade pact designed to promote U.S. economic and strategic interests over China's will go down as one of the worst decisions by an American president in the past 50 years, according to trade and foreign policy analysts. Now that China has applied to join the Comprehensive Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, Donald Trump's decision looks even worse than it did in 2017.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/s...

Cato Institute
ebruary 10, 2022 10:45AM
5 Years Later the United States Is Still Paying for Its TPP Blunder
By Colin Grabow
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Last month'January 23 to be exact'marked the five‐year anniversary of President Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the Trans‐Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement. The country has been paying for it ever since.
Comprised of the United States and eleven other Pacific Rim countries'including economic heavyweight Japan'the TPP was found by a 2016 Cato analysis to result in net trade liberalization. A study by the U.S. International Trade Commission calculated a real U.S. GDP increase of $42.7 billion through 2032 as a result of TPP membership while a Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) working paper foresaw gains to U.S. real incomes of $131 billion through 2030.
But the United States withdrew from the TPP, and those gains never happened.
The TPP, however, was aimed at more than just lowering trade barriers. It was also an attempt by the United States'along with like‐minded allies'to help shape the rules governing trade in the Asia‐Pacific region. As Asia's center both geographically and economically, China is already assured of having a significant say in such matters. The TPP was meant to ensure the United States had a prominent seat at the table when such rules were being hammered out'before it opted to push away.
In other words, U.S. losses from its TPP withdrawal have not just been economic but geopolitical. And if the TPP was deemed a useful tool in countering China's influence during the years it was being negotiated, it would be even more of an asset now given the bilateral relationship's increasingly acrimonious nature.

https://www.cato.org/blog/5-ye...

Rand Corporation:
Strategic Consequences of U.S. Withdrawal from TPP Timothy R. Heath
Since negotiations concluded for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in late 2015, observers have argued that Asian policymakers would interpret failure of the pact as a sign of America's declining interest in the region or inability to assert leadership. Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong warned in 2015, 'Failing to get the TPP done will hurt the credibility and standing of the U.S., not just in Asia, but worldwide.'Now that the U.S. has abandoned the pact, have the warnings proven prescient or overblown?
The TPP is a regional trade agreement involving the U.S. and 11 other Asian-Pacific countries that together comprise 40 percent of the world's economic output. The TPP's economic objectives included liberalization of trade in Asia, market reforms, and strengthened trade rules to support America's competitive industries and accord with the modern realities of digital commerce.
But the TPP also aimed to further the country's strategic interests in at least in three ways. First, U.S. leaders and strategists saw it as a way to strengthen the country's leadership in Asia by complementing its diplomatic and military power. Second, the TPP served as part of a broader effort to shore up an international order premised on market economics and liberal values. Third, the pact aimed to strengthen key partners; most notably Japan and Vietnam, by spurring badly needed domestic economic reforms and boosting growth.

Emphasized:
Withdrawal from the TPP has exacerbated regional doubts about U.S. international leadership and of its role in Asia.

A weakening of the U.S. leadership role has added to the deepening strategic rivalry between China and Japan.

A risk is growing that countries frustrated with an unresponsive Western-led international order will consider alternative institutions.

https://www.rand.org/blog/2017...