SYDNEY: Australia and New Zealand hope to rescue the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) by urging China and other Asian countries to join the agreement after US President Donald Trump stayed faithful to his commitment to haul out of the understanding.
The TPP, which the United States had signed but not ratified, was a pillar of former US President Barack Obama’s pivot to Asia. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has touted it as a motor of financial change, and in addition a stabilizer to a rising China, which is not a TPP part.
Fulfilling his campaign promise, Trump marked an official request in the Oval Office on Monday hauling the United States out of the 2015 TPP understanding and separating the United States from its Asian partners.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said he had held discussions with Abe, New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong overnight about the possibility of proceeding with the TPP without the United States.
“Losing the United States from the TPP is a big loss, there is no question about that,” Turnbull said. “But we are not about to walk away … certainly there is potential for China to join the TPP.”
Obama framed TPP without China in an effort to write Asia’s trade rules before Beijing could, establishing US economic leadership in the region as part of his “pivot to Asia”.
China has proposed a counter pact, the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP) and has championed the South-east Asian-backed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
The US president made comments critical of Japan’s auto exports to the US and the dearth of US auto exports to Japan, which poses a threat to Japan’s influential car industry.
“We have no tariffs on US cars,” Trade Minister Hiroshige Seko said. “In addition, we do not take any other discriminatory measures against US car imports.”
Turnbull said there was still a possibility “that US policy could change over time on this, as it has done on other trade deals”, noting that some Republican Party members of congress have been “strong supporters”.
New Zealand Trade Minister Todd McClay said he had talked with a number of TPP-member ministers when he attended the World Economic Forum in Davos last week and he expected they would meet over the coming months.
“The agreement still has value as an FTA (Free Trade Agreement) with the other countries involved,” McClay said in a statement.
