U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman views the negotiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership as a crowning trade achievement of the Obama administration despite the deal’s highly uncertain future, suggesting in an “exit memo” this week that the incoming Trump team use it to “shape” globalization.
[Daily News| January 7, 2016 |Inside US Trade]
Agreements like TPP “offer a positive vision for American leadership in the global economy,” he writes in the nine-page document, released Jan. 5. “This vision is vitally important, because in the absence of U.S. guidance and leadership, the world is likely to turn to alternative policy models that will put the United States at a permanent disadvantage.”
The memo cites a familiar litany of Obama administration trade policy arguments, insisting that the U.S. must lead in the Asia-Pacific or cede important ground to China. It also touts what Froman sees as a very strong enforcement success record, noting that every World Trade Organization case it has brought has ended in the United States’ favor.
