{"slug":"trump-tpp-withdrawal-trade-agreements","title":"TPP Withdrawal and Multilateral Trade Retreat: Ceding Pacific Economic Leadership to China","date":"2017-01-23","lastUpdated":"2017-01-23","description":"On his third day in office, Trump withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership — a 12-nation trade agreement covering 40% of the world economy, designed in part to establish U.S.-led trade rules in the Pacific before China could set them. The remaining 11 nations completed the agreement without the U.S.; China moved to fill the resulting vacuum with its own Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. Foreign policy analysts across the political spectrum described the move as a significant strategic gift to China.","summary":"The TPP was designed explicitly to be a counterweight to Chinese economic influence in the Asia-Pacific region — establishing labor standards, intellectual property rules, and trade norms that reflected democratic values rather than Chinese state capitalism. Trump's withdrawal handed China the diplomatic and economic initiative in the region it had been seeking. The 11 remaining nations completed the CPTPP without the U.S.; China has since established its own trade framework covering much of the same region.","category":"foreign-policy","severity":"major","ongoing":false,"sources":[{"url":"https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/23/us/politics/tpp-trump-trade-nafta.html","title":"Trump Withdraws U.S. From Trans-Pacific Partnership","publisher":"The New York Times"},{"url":"https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/01/23/trump-just-killed-tpp-heres-what-that-means/","title":"Trump killed the TPP. Here's what that means.","publisher":"The Washington Post"},{"url":"https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/trans-pacific-partnership-tpp","title":"What Is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)?","publisher":"Council on Foreign Relations"},{"url":"https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-the-us-should-rejoin-the-trans-pacific-partnership/","title":"The strategic cost of TPP withdrawal","publisher":"Brookings Institution"}],"draft":false,"status":"published","tags":["TPP","trade","China","Pacific","first-term","foreign-policy","multilateralism"],"relatedEntries":[],"timeline":[{"date":"2017-01-23","title":"Trump withdraws from TPP on Day 3","summary":"Three days into his presidency, Trump signs an executive order withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which had been signed but not yet ratified."},{"date":"2018-03-08","title":"Remaining 11 nations sign CPTPP","summary":"The 11 remaining nations sign the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership in Santiago, Chile. The agreement preserves most of TPP's trade rules and commitments but gives the U.S. no voice in the framework or its preferential access to member markets."},{"date":"2022-01-01","title":"China's RCEP enters into force","summary":"The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership — China's trade bloc covering 15 nations and nearly one-third of global GDP — enters into force. The bloc covers much of the same Asia-Pacific region as TPP without the labor standards, intellectual property protections, or democratic governance norms that the TPP had included."}],"location":{"name":"Washington, D.C.","lat":38.9072,"lng":-77.0369},"custom":{"era":"first-term","posture":"executive-action","warCrimeClassification":"enabling","internationalLaw":[],"iccRelevance":false,"victims":"American exporters who lost preferential market access; Asian-Pacific allies who had structured trade policy around anticipated U.S. participation; workers in sectors that would have benefited from expanded market access; the broader international rules-based order in trade","structuredPerpetrators":[{"name":"Donald Trump","role":"President of the United States","institution":"White House"}],"updateLog":[{"date":"2017-01-23","summary":"Initial documentation."}]}}