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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: -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.