Weekly Overview

Why Trade deals matter

RCEP/Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership:

• Mainly consolidating existing trade arrangements

• India is not a member. This is important. US needs to keep India out of it. We need a counter balance against China.

• China finally has a deal with Japan. This is good for China, ok for Japan. Not good for US. Strategy should be Chinese isolation not allowing them to increase their leverage over US allies.

• US needs to get involved in this treaty. Back when US left TPP I was screeching my head in disbelief.
  -Economic gains were minimal for sure- by one estimate a GDP increase of 0.8% over 10 years in US. BUT: this provided US with leverage to input its own rules into pacific trade deals.
  -Ability to design multilateral trade deals from US interest perspective was huge. Missed opportunity.
  -We could have for example imposed stricter rules on Chinese tech companies. Confronting them on IP theft could have been easier.
  -Instead the opp was missed due to a populist appeasement of mid-western manufacturing voters - which at the end did not even pay off for Trump HAHAH
  -Now it seems RCEP lacks any stricter standards of TPP that constrained Chinese giants. Again missed opp from US to exercise leverage over China.