As Obama Plays China Card on Trade, Chinese Pursue Their Own Deals
>“If we don’t write the rules for trade around the world, guess what?” Mr. Obama warned at the headquarters of the sporting goods giant, whose wares he uses when he works out. “China will.”
>Xi Jinping, the Chinese president and head of the Communist Party, is making a parallel pitch — but rooted in a very different strategy for gaining global influence. Mr. Xi has essentially shrugged off the question of whether his nation, the world’s second-largest economy, will join the pact. Instead, he has picked off American allies like Britain, Germany and South Korea to join, against the administration’s wishes, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, a project started by China in part to keep its own state-owned firms busy building roads, dams and power plants around Asia.
>China is at the same time setting up other trade pacts around the region so it can use its cash and enormous market leverage to strike deals more advantageous to its interests. Mr. Xi was in Kazakhstan this month plugging his “One Belt, One Road” initiative of construction from Europe to Central Asia to the seas around China.
>It is a subtle form of competition, but one that many in the Obama administration see as the most important geopolitical power struggle in the world today.
>“It’s not a black-and-white contest between us and China, even though the president has presented it that way to sell it to Democrats,” said Michael J. Green, a Georgetown University professor who charts the progress of the contest. “The Pacific Partnership puts pressure on the Chinese to up their game. We are somewhere between direct competition over who will make the rules and a competitive liberalization that will eventually create some common rules around the world.”
https://archive.is/7ZY3h
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TPP is modeled after a trade agreement America did with Korea is 2012 or so.
Contrary to Obama's claims, it upped the trade deficit with the Korean by ~85%.
We need articles on this.
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> Senate Democrats reached a deal with Republicans Wednesday to move forward on U.S. President Barack Obama’s fast-track trade agenda, one day after pro-trade Senators stalled the bill by blocking debate, according to Politico and Roll Call.
> In exchange for their support on a vote for the fast-track trade authority, Democrats will get separate votes on two related bills on currency manipulation and duty-free status to U.S. imports of goods from certain sub-Saharan African countries.
> Reuters
> The Senate is expected to debate amendments to the fast-track bill next week and Republican Senator Rob Portman, a former U.S. Trade Representative, said he would seek changes to write sanctions against currency manipulators into trade deals, a move backed by U.S. automakers such as Ford Motor Co.
> The White House, which has warned such sanctions would derail the TPP, has so far side-stepped a clash by convincing Democrats to isolate currency rules into a separate customs bill. That passed the Senate with the support of all Democrats and more than half the chamber's Republicans.
> Portman said he would also seek to include those rules - allowing import duties against currency cheats - into fast-track itself.
> Democratic Senator Charles Schumer, who drafted the provision, said action on currency might be needed as a sweetener for fast-track in the House, where many Democrats think labor and environmental protections fall short and some conservative Republicans oppose any more power for Obama.
> The Senate also passed a bill extending duty-free access to U.S. markets for African and other developing nations.
> American Journal of Transportation
> The bill must also pass the House of Representatives, where a tougher fight is expected. Trade is a hot-button issue with many Democrats in the United States, as labor unions and environmentalists - two of their important political supporters - are actively trying to kill fast-track.
> The Guardian
> The debate on amendments to the trade bill is scheduled to begin in the coming days and the Senate majority whip, John Cornyn, told reporters that he hoped to have to a final vote on Trade Promotion Authority by the end of next week.
No news on the date of the vote (act as though it'll happen tomorrow), and Democrats voted so they could have their say on bills RE: trade with Sub-Saharan Africa. What possible business could we have with sub-Saharan Africa? Hell, what possible business could sub-Saharan Africa have with anyone?