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The renamed TPP, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership has been signed by 11 countries. https://globalnews.ca/news/4069924/tpp-trans-pacific-partnership-signing-canada/
Thankfully, Trump's withdrawal from the TPP allowed the Canadian people to persuade their government to push for removal of most of the contentious IP obligations that the US demanded, http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2017/11/rethinking-ip-in-the-tpp/. America is considering rejoining, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/27/us/politics/mnuchin-tpp-trans-pacific-partnership-trump.html
The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) will reduce tariffs in countries that together amount to more than 13 per cent of the global economy – a total of $10 trillion. With the United States, it would have represented 40 per cent.
Even without the United States, the deal will span a market of nearly 500 million people, making it one of the globe's three largest trade agreements, according to Chilean and Canadian trade statistics.
[...] Trump has also threatened to dump the North American Free Trade Agreement unless the other two members of the pact, Canada and Mexico, agree to provisions that Trump says would boost U.S. manufacturing and employment. He argues that the 1994 accord has caused the migration of jobs and factories southward to lower-cost Mexico.
[...] The 11 member countries are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 11 2018, @03:38AM (18 children)
An impetus for TPP was to isolate and encircle China, an initiative accompanying America's so-called Asia-pivot. Would be funny if China joined TPP.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 11 2018, @04:27AM (6 children)
Trump was right: The U.S. would be better off if the Presidents of yore had just gone to the beach instead.
The U.S. government has spent trillions of dollars of resources (those are world-wide resources, when considering they were allocated through Uncle Sam's borrowing and counterfeiting), and it wasted those resources on nothing of value; there's nothing to show for it. NOTHING.
Governmentalism is founded on the idea that a government is going to be a pretty damn good steward of society's resources, and that government brains will be pretty damn good investors. Well, once again, for the thousandth time, history has shown that this assumption just ain't true.
America's "Asia pivot" now? Whose cockamamie idea is that? The same organization who invaded Vietnam based on the worthless Domino Theory?
Decades later, and Vietnam's communists have been subdued by the joys of capitalistic trade. The lesson is clear: Get the fuck out of the way, governments, and let The People go about their peaceful, voluntary, mutually profitable business.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 11 2018, @05:00AM (4 children)
Somalia is a paradise.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 11 2018, @05:22AM (1 child)
Somalia was controlled by a single-party government operating under the philosophy of "scientific communism".
That Somalia failed under this State is no surprised. What is even less surprising is that Somalia's culture of authoritarianism gave rise to government in the form of warlords.
Nevertheless, with the overreaching centralized State out of the way, Somalians reverted to ancient, slightly capitalistic ideas about trade, and the result has been an enormous improvement in the quality of their lives; in fact, Somalians have experienced gains that in many ways far outstrip the results of the surrounding societies that exist under more "stable" governments.
So, the failure of Somalia has nothing to do with capitalism or libertarianism, and indeed capitalism and a kind of libertarianism is what has saved them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 11 2018, @02:37PM
Isn't Somalia controlled by muslim pirates?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 11 2018, @05:23AM
Somalia is functionally identical to the USA, plus or minus a few decades. What, you don't think the warlords consider themselves the ruling class? Hint: they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 11 2018, @05:43PM
Somalia was controlled by a single-party government operating under the philosophy of "scientific communism".
That Somalia failed under this State is no surprised. What is even less surprising is that Somalia's culture of authoritarianism gave rise to government in the form of warlords.
Nevertheless, with the overreaching centralized State out of the way, Somalians reverted to ancient, slightly capitalistic ideas about trade, and the result has been an enormous improvement in the quality of their lives; in fact, Somalians have experienced gains that in many ways far outstrip the results of the surrounding societies that exist under more "stable" governments.
So, the failure of Somalia has nothing to do with capitalism or libertarianism, and indeed capitalism and a kind of libertarianism is what has saved them.
(Score: 1) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday March 11 2018, @07:27AM
My predecessors left me one thing I'm very thankful for. My nuclear arsenal. It was one of the greatest, maybe the greatest ever. Until President Reagan did a number on it. Believe me, he weakened it tremendously. It's still one of the strongest, it's nothing like it was. Nothing like what we need. The Bushes and Clinton did nothing to make it strong again, to make it great again. Obama, terrible as he was, he did a little. He said, let's spend $1 trillion to modernize our nuclear. But he wanted to spend it over 30 years. It's not enough, folks. We need to invest much more in our nuclear.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SubiculumHammer on Sunday March 11 2018, @05:25AM (7 children)
geopolitically it made sense, but the problem was that we'd give up too much that makes us American by signing it.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by ilPapa on Sunday March 11 2018, @05:32AM (6 children)
Of all the cockamamie ways that humans find to separate themselves from one another - language, religion, sports teams, race - none may be as completely idiotic as "national identity".
There is no place on Earth that nationalism cannot make worse.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by captain normal on Sunday March 11 2018, @06:27AM (5 children)
Yep...borders only exist in the minds of people straining to preserve their personal fiefdoms. If you look at satellite photos of the planet, you see no borders (except for a few heavily armed places). Borders and walls are not to keep people out, but to keep enslaved people in.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday March 11 2018, @07:47AM
China, that's a great example. Don't you love what they've done in China? The Great Wall of China, built 2,000 years ago, is 13,000 miles long, folks. They say you can see it from space, right? You can't see it from space. Maybe if you have tremendous eyesight. But you can see it with satellite, you absolutely can. Let me tell you, it's so beautiful on the satellite. Like a long, winding river. But stone. And @FLOTUS [twitter.com] visited it, she looked absolutely stunning. As she always does, right? Her job is to look amazing and she does an amazing job at that.
They didn't have tractors, they didn't have cranes, they didn't have excavation equipment. We need 1,000 miles and we have all the materials, we can do that so beautiful. This will be a wall with a big, very beautiful door because we want the legals to come back into the country. Not too many, we have too many legals right now. We want people of talent. We have a lot of good people, they’ve been here and they’ve done a good job. It’s a tough situation and in some cases they haven’t been good people, and there have been some problems. The good ones we’ll expedite.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 11 2018, @12:49PM
No, borders are to keep people out. It's starts with people who violate your personal space, extends to your private space (home, small holding) and from their to bigger boundaries such as national borders. Only dysfunctional authoritarian (typically socialist) states employ borders need to "keep enslaved people in".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 11 2018, @04:54PM
Borders exist because trying to govern an entire planet of people with differing cultures, problems and viewpoints has yet to become practical. We'll probably get their some day when it's practical to travel between any two places on the planet in a couple hours, but we're not there yet.
Just look at how much trouble there is in most of the world with corruption and with local officials doing things that directly contradict what the national leaders are trying to accomplish. Or in places like the US and China where the main security threats are domestic terrorists rather than some foreign state.
Not to mention how hard it's been in the US to pass even moderate gun control regulations like universal background checks even with the overwhelming support of the voters. And yet all the other developed countries have far more regulation on firearms than we do.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Sunday March 11 2018, @06:18PM (1 child)
hah! Yup, can't see the borders from space. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uLuecz--GXg/Va147uuAISI/AAAAAAAAeSE/Rz0ahAQ1Hd8/s640/korea%2Bnight%2Bno%2Blights.jpg [blogspot.com]
There is a country between the two blobs of lights.
And if you think the southern blob of lights has a northern border to enslave it's own people then you are delusional.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Monday March 12 2018, @11:21AM
South Korea, they built the beautiful Concrete Wall on their Border. And it keeps the North Koreans out very well. They're at war, but it's a lot like peace. Because of the wall. And maybe they won't need the Concrete Wall much longer. Because of me!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 11 2018, @08:57AM (1 child)
> Would be funny if China joined TPP.
It is an effective counter move, so it's not improbable.
I looked at the news about this partnership. Not much in official news. Therefore bad news for us...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 11 2018, @02:39PM
They would be sued into the ground using the ISDS backdoor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 11 2018, @05:40PM
Trump was right: The U.S. would be better off if the Presidents of yore had just gone to the beach instead.
The U.S. government has spent trillions of dollars of resources (those are world-wide resources, when considering they were allocated through Uncle Sam's borrowing and counterfeiting), and it wasted those resources on nothing of value; there's nothing to show for it. NOTHING.
Governmentalism is founded on the idea that a government is going to be a pretty damn good steward of society's resources, and that government brains will be pretty damn good investors. Well, once again, for the thousandth time, history has shown that this assumption just ain't true.
America's "Asia pivot" now? Whose cockamamie idea is that? The same organization who invaded Vietnam based on the worthless Domino Theory?
Decades later, and Vietnam's communists have been subdued by the joys of capitalistic trade. The lesson is clear: Get the fuck out of the way, governments, and let The People go about their peaceful, voluntary, mutually profitable business.