Press. voanews.com.
President Donald
Trump withdrew the United States from the 12-nation Pacific Rim trade deal on
Monday as he started his first full week in office. At the White House, Trump
called it a "great thing for the American worker - what we just did.”
The new
president, as past Republican chief executives have done, also signed an order
reinstating a ban on providing government funds to international groups that
perform abortions or provide information about the procedure.
The trade deal,
known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, had been negotiated since 2009 during
former President Barack Obama's White House tenure, but the U.S. Congress never
ratified it, with numerous lawmakers opposed to or skeptical of the deal. It
would have covered trade with Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Chile,
Canada, Mexico and four other countries.
White House
spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters that as Trump "has said many times,
this type of multinational agreement is not in our best interest, and he’s
moving quickly to advance trade policies that increase the competitiveness of
the American worker and manufacturer." Spicer said the new president would
pursue bilateral trade agreements with individual countries throughout the
world.
The TPP would
have been the biggest regional trade deal in history, covering nearly 40
percent of the world's economy and about a third of world trade. China didn't
take part in the talks, but appears ready to step into the vacuum and create
its own deals with Southeast Asian countries that would have been part of the
12-nation agreement.
In advocating
for the deal, Obama said last year, "We can't let countries like China
write the rules of the global economy. We should write those rules." Trump,
who took office last Friday, assailed globalization of the world's economy
throughout his long run to the White House, saying U.S. multinational trade
deals cost American workers their jobs as their employers moved operations
abroad in search of cheaper labor.
Even before
announcing his run for the presidency a year-and-a-half ago, Trump said,
"The Trans-Pacific Partnership is an attack on America's business. It does
not stop Japan's currency manipulation. This is a bad deal."
The agreement
would have cut more than 18,000 tariffs, including on all U.S. manufactured
goods and almost all American farm products. The deal sought to end
exploitative child labor and set acceptable work conditions on minimum wages,
hours of work, and occupational safety and health.
The new
president said in a Twitter comment that his first week would be busy,
"planned with a heavy focus on jobs and national security." He met
Monday morning with top executives from U.S. manufacturers and later in the day
has a White House meeting set with union leaders and a contingent of workers.
At the start of
the meeting with the business leaders, Trump assured them of his intent to
streamline government. "The regulations are going to be cut massively and
the taxes way down," he said. Trump warned the business executives to not
move their operations to other countries, saying they would face a hefty tariff
if they manufacture products elsewhere and then attempt to bring them back
across the border to sell in the U.S.
Among those
meeting with him were the leaders of Dow Chemical, SpaceX, the Dell computing
firm, the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical company and aerospace giant
Lockheed Martin.
The president
called on the business leaders to come up with a list in the next 30 days of
ways to boost U.S. manufacturing, an important sector of the world's largest
economy, but one that has lagged in the recovery since the country's steep
recession in 2008 and 2009.
Trump says he is
not against trade deals, but wants more favorable terms for the United States
that benefit its workers. The American leader says he also wants to redraft the
1994 North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada.
At a swearing-in
ceremony for top White House advisers Sunday, Trump said he will discuss NAFTA,
immigration and border security as he meets January 31 with Mexican President
Enrique Pena Nieto. The White House said he also plans to meet soon with
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
"I think
we're going to have a very good result for Mexico, for the United States, and
for everyone involved," Trump said. Trump vowed during the campaign to
build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to thwart illegal immigration that he
said would be paid for by Mexico. Pena Nieto has dismissed the idea that his
government would provide the funding, calling it "ridiculous."
Trump's busy
schedule Monday includes a meeting with congressional leaders and one-on-one
discussions with House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan as the new
administration and Republicans in Congress embark on attempts to overturn many
of Obama's actions. It is the first time in more than a decade that Republicans
have controlled both chambers of Congress and the White House.
Just hours after
his inauguration, Trump signed an order setting in motion his intent to try to
promptly repeal Obama's signature health care reforms. Before his meetings with
the leaders of Mexico and Canada, Trump will host talks with British Prime
Minister Theresa May Friday in the Oval Office. May has said she wants to focus
on post-Brexit trade talks, NATO and fighting terrorism.
Trump's first
two days in office got off to a rocky start, with the president boasting
falsely about the size of the crowd that attended his swearing-in. White House
spokesman Sean Spicer later offered inflated claims about the crowd. On Sunday,
one of Trump's aides, Kellyanne Conway, described Spicer's assessment of the
crowd size as "alternative facts."
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