As expected, President Trump today formally ended U.S. participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Politico reports:
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday morning to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership…
The Asia-Pacific agreement, which the Obama administration negotiated and hoped to ratify before leaving office, is written in such a way that it is effectively dead without the participation of the United States and its huge economy.
The TPP was championed by many business and trade groups in Washington. The economic benefit to our state was substantial, as we wrote last year.
A new study calculates the value of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement to Washington state. The research was conducted by Community Attributes Incorporated for the Association of Washington Business and the Washington Council on International Trade. AWB reports on the analysis.
The data illustrate in detail the enormous economic benefit from the deal: $8.7 billion in new Washington state exports. That would raise Washington’s total exports to $121.6 billion or nearly $1,300 per resident and add anywhere from 5,900 to 26,400 additional jobs.
As Politico reports, the deal had unraveled long before Trump took office. Free trade, however, continues to be of major importance to our state economy. The question now is, simply, what replaces the TPP.
