Biden should channel Trump to get back to the Pacific trade deal

President Joe Biden is in Asia now for meetings with the leaders of Japan, South Korea, Australia and India. They will discuss how to counter China’s influence in the Pacific region and Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will almost certainly urge President Biden to return to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). At Eurasia Group, I advise multi-national firms on political risk, and they are frequently wondering whether the United States will return to TPP.

There are good reasons for Biden to listen to Kishida and reconsider TPP, but he would need to overcome the same opposition in Congress that ultimately led the United States not to join it several years ago. There is a path back to TPP, even if the Republicans win control of Congress in November, but it requires Biden to focus on the economic benefits for everyday Americans rather than lofty foreign policy goals. 

And, in an odd twist, it means Biden should take a page from the playbook of former President Donald Trump.

The TPP was a trade agreement among the United States and 11 other Pacific-Rim countries to liberalize trade, but the United States ultimately abandoned it when Trump pulled out, even though Congress already opposed it because of concerns that it didn’t help American workers. Japan and the other countries renamed TPP (now wordily called the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership), made some changes in case the United States came back, and completed it without the United States. But they now desperately want America to rejoin because China wants to crash the party and join it.

America’s Asian allies, like Japan and many American foreign policy experts, continue to press for the United States to return to the Pacific trade deal because of the foreign policy and national security benefits of a united front against China. During the American debate over TPP in 2015, then-Secretary of Defense Ash Carter made this geostrategic argument for TPP in a memorable way, saying that “passing TPP is as important to me as another aircraft carrier.” 

But Congress’s reaction to Carter’s compelling plea? A big yawn.

Congress cared foremost whether TPP was good for American workers — not American foreign policy.

Years ago, the United States negotiated trade agreements with countries like Israel, Jordan and Morocco for the foreign policy benefits of closer ties to those countries. And Congress approved those agreements, even though they weren’t really much about trade. Those days are gone, however.

The reason that I joined the U.S. government in 2015 was to work on the TPP negotiations and for its congressional approval. When TPP collapsed, it was demoralizing for me and my colleagues at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, who had worked tirelessly for years negotiating it. But I learned a valuable lesson from that failure: For Congress, the foreign policy benefits of trade agreements are not that important.

TPP flamed out in Congress due to bipartisan opposition, but mainly because of vocal opposition from organized labor and progressive Democrats. The AFL-CIO strongly opposed TPP provisions on automobiles, for instance. Those provisions would have made it easier to build automobiles in TPP countries and other places, including China, and export them to America. As a result, the way to return to TPP is not by touting its foreign policy benefits — it’s by doing the grunt work of renegotiating it with the economic benefits for everyday Americans in mind.

The Trump administration did this when it renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement, now called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement or USMCA. On this score, Biden ought to channel Trump. The AFL-CIO ultimately supported the USMCA, because it had much stronger provisions for American workers than NAFTA. That’s a big reason why Congress voted for it, with overwhelming bipartisan support.

If Biden renegotiated TPP to address these concerns (such as by adding new provisions to support high-paying American jobs), the AFL-CIO and progressive Democrats would support it. Many Republicans would also support it because these protections would help blue-collar workers. 

So, if countries like Japan really want the United States back in the Pacific trade deal, they ought to say they will renegotiate it and accept some “America First” provisions. Otherwise, it’s useless to urge the Biden administration to return to the agreement that failed in 2016.

The long road back to the TPP does not run through the halls of foreign policy think tanks. It runs through the halls of AFL-CIO. The sooner TPP proponents accept this reality, the sooner America can complete trade agreements that not only help working Americans but also strengthen American foreign policy. 

In that order.

David Boling was a trade negotiator in the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations. He works at Eurasia Group, as Director for Japan and Asian Trade.