On Saturday, Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, stated that he would kill off the Pacific trade pact U.S. President Joe Biden has advanced if he were to win the 2024 election and return to the White House.
Speaking to supporters in Iowa, Trump said he was against the Biden administration’s regional trade deal being negotiated with 13 other countries, declaring that it would hollow out United States manufacturing and cause job losses.
Talks on the trade sections of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), aimed at offering the region an alternate choice to China’s growing trade influence, stumbled recently after some countries, including Vietnam and Indonesia, declined to commit to solid labor and environmental standards.
Trump, who withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal forged with many of the same countries after taking office in January 2017, said he would strike out what he referred to as “TPP Two” immediately upon taking office.
“Under the next administration, the Biden plan for ‘TPP Two’ will be dead on Day One,” Trump said at a campaign event in Fort Dodge, roughly 94 miles north of Des Moines. “It’s worse than the first one, threatening to pulverize farmers and manufacturers with another massive globalist monstrosity designed to turbocharge outsourcing to Asia.”
The Biden administration had hoped to finish key chapters of its IPEF trade initiative in time for this week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting. It has vowed to continue negotiating the ambitious deal. Still, trade experts and business groups say that election-year pressures and resistance to demanding commitments from some countries make the deal improbable.