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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 11 2018, @06:07AM (3 children)
Yeah, almost as much as the US debt. Talk about small change.
(Score: 1) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday March 11 2018, @07:11AM (1 child)
Our debt is out of control. It's coming up to $21 trillion. It's not there, it's getting there. Because Bush & Obama left me with a mess. $7 trillion for wars in the Middle East, $29 trillion to bail out our insurance, our banks -- pretty soon it adds up to real money, as the other politicians like to say. They like to say it, they don't do anything about it. I'm the first and only one to do something. We need to get our trade in balance, we can't keep running trade deficits, so I canceled the TPP. Our taxes were much too high, they were killing our economy. So I did the biggest Tax Cut in history -- it's not just a Tax Cut, we had to call it the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act, because we found out there were so many jobs that come with that. Our economy has grown tremendously since I was elected.
But to have a strong economy, we need strong infrastructure. My administration is working every day to deliver the world-class infrastructure that our people deserve and, frankly, that our country deserves. That’s why I signed an executive order to dramatically reform the nation’s badly broken infrastructure permitting process.
It took 11 months to build the Empire State Building. But today, it can take as long as a decade and much more than that -- many, many stories where it takes 20 and 25 years just to get approvals to start construction of a fairly routine highway. Highway builders must get up to 16 different approvals involving nine different federal agencies governed by 29 different statutes. One agency alone can stall a project for many, many years, and even decades.
Not only does this cost our economy billions of dollars, but it also denies our citizens the safe and modern infrastructure they deserve. This over-regulated permitting process is a massive self-inflicted wound on our country -- it’s disgraceful -- denying our people much-needed investments in their community.
So that can go out to 20 years, that can go out to about 20 years to get something approved. This is for a highway. I’ve seen a highway recently in a certain state -- I won’t mention its name -- 17 years. I could have built it for four or five million dollars without the permitting process. It cost hundreds of millions of dollars, but it took 17 years to get it approved and many, many, many, many pages of environmental impact studies.
Obama really did a number on our infrastructure planning. Because he put in a rule that said you have to plan for climate change, for global warming, for rising sea level. You have to plan for flooding. For things that will probably never happen. Big waste of time, big waste of money. Big hoax by the Chinese and the global special interests. So I repealed that rule.
With what I signed, it's going to be less than two years for a highway. So it’s going to be quick, it’s going to be a very streamlined process. And, by the way, if it doesn’t meet environmental safeguards, we’re not going to approve it. Very simple. We’re not going to approve it. I've gotten so many awards for environmental -- people don't know this -- I'm very environmental. I don't need some study to tell me if a project is bad for the environment, I know. And when it's bad I tell them "no."
So my executive order also requires agencies to work together efficiently by requiring one lead agency for each major infrastructure project. It also holds agencies accountable if they fail to streamline their review process. So each agency is accountable. We’re going to get infrastructure built quickly, inexpensively -- relatively speaking -- and the permitting process will go very, very quickly.
No longer will we tolerate one job-killing delay after another. No longer will we accept a broken system that benefits consultants and lobbyists at the expense of hardworking Americans.
Now, I knew the process very well -- probably better than anybody. I had to get permits for this building and many of the buildings I built -- all of the buildings I built in Manhattan and many other places. And I will tell you that the consultants are rich people. They go around making it very difficult. They lobby Congress, they lobby state governments, city governments to make it very difficult so that you have to hire consultants, and that you have to take years and pay them a fortune. So we’re streamlining the process, and we won’t be having so much of that anymore.
No longer will we allow the infrastructure of our magnificent country to crumble and decay. While protecting the environment, we will build gleaming new roads, bridges, railways, waterways, tunnels, and highways. We will rebuild our country with American workers, American iron, American aluminum, American steel. We're doing tariffs on the aluminum, on the steel. On solar panels. We will create millions of new jobs and make millions of American dreams come true.
Our infrastructure will again be the best in the world. We used to have the greatest infrastructure anywhere in the world, and today we’re like a third-world country. We are literally like a third-world country. Our infrastructure will again be the best, and we will restore the pride in our communities, our nation, and all over the United States we’ll be proud again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 11 2018, @04:50PM
And yet you decided to increase it by over a trillion dollars to fund tax cuts for the wealthiest.
If our debt is so out of control, perhaps the first place to go looking for funding is the people who have it. In most cases you can't balance a budget on cuts alone at some point you have to increase your top line so that there's more to be had at the bottom line.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 11 2018, @04:49PM
I'll take it! Spare change? Can you spare some change?