But it fails to address currency manipulation. That’s bad news.
Big news out today: The 12 countries party to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal have reached an agreement. It is big and far-reaching: it will cover, as Reuters notes, 40 percent of the global economy. That’s a lot of economy!
From the very beginning, the Alliance for American Manufacturing has consistently said that we hope any final TPP agreement will include strong, enforceable provisions that would deter currency manipulation – a practice that too many TPP signatories use to give their exports an artificial boost. This completed TPP is so fresh that the text of the deal hasn’t even been released yet, but it’s pretty clear the currency issue will not be in it. It increasingly looks like it will be addressed in a separate forum, though what commitments that forum will require of the TPP members are anyone’s guess.
It sounds as if there is a separate agreement to at least attempt to create a forum to address currency manipulation #TPP
— David Shepardson (@davidshepardson) October 5, 2015
What’s more, the TPP seems to have weaker Rules of Origin protections than ones the United States has previously agreed to in binding international agreements. Says AAM President Scott Paul:
That means that goods from countries like China could be incorporated in products assembled in the TPP region and thereby enjoy the benefits of tariff-free access to the U.S. market without sharing any of the responsibilities of TPP membership.
In short: We’re skeptical. Very, very skeptical. But the deal isn’t done yet. So, until then, we’ll anxiously await release of the full TPP text. Only then will we really know what this agreement will mean for American factories and American workers.