Obama upbeat about TPP despite ‘noisy’ opposition

HANOI — President Barack Obama said yesterday he remained confident the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal would be ratified in the United States, despite strong political opposition in Washington and during an election year.

“The reason I remain confident is it’s the right thing to do,” he told reporters in Vietnam, where he is currently on a three-day visit.

“I have not yet seen a credible argument that once we get TPP in place we are going to be worse off ... we’re going to be better off,” he told reporters in a press conference with his Vietnamese counterpart.

But the US leader conceded, as he seeks to get the ambitious tariff-slashing deal through a hostile, Republican-dominated Congress, that “the politics will be noisy”.

“Every trade deal is painful because folks are always seeing if they can get a better deal,” he said, arguing that the TPP, which will group 12 economies, is a good thing for US businesses. “This is the fastest-growing part of the world. This represents an enormous market for the US.”

Approval of the TPP, a linchpin of Mr Obama’s “pivot” towards Asia for American economic and foreign policy, has been hung up in the US Congress and has taken a serious political beating from the candidates running to replace Mr Obama in the White House.

Presumptive Republican candidate Donald Trump, who calls the accord a “terrible deal”, has rallied blue-collar Republicans behind his message that international trade was to blame for economic problems.

Even elements of Mr Obama’s Democratic Party are opposed to the deal, which aims to gain lower tariff access and bring down trade barriers to US goods in a market representing 40 per cent of the global economy.

The pact also aims to wrest influence from a booming China, which dominates Asian trade.

But critics warn the TPP will damage American business by giving cheaper overseas goods preferential access to its domestic market, slashing wages and jobs.

Yesterday, Mr Obama acknowledged that another complaint in the US is that the TPP opens up its markets to countries with lower wages and a harsher working environment.

But he countered this argument by saying, “We make commitments to raise labour standards, to ensure workers can raise their voice, to address environmental problems. TPP allows us to work with Vietnam on these issues.”

Standing alongside Mr Obama, Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang backed the TPP as a game-changing pact that can reshape global trade and contribute to sustaining Vietnam’s dynamism.

“As for Vietnam, TPP is one step forward in implementation of the country’s deep and comprehensive international integration policy, which aims at promoting the national economic growth of Vietnam,” said Mr Quang.

He said the pact can “be a driver of economic growth in (the) Asia-Pacific region”, adding that Vietnam “is committed to fully implementing” all of its clauses, which include recognition of workers’ rights. Currently, unions are banned in Vietnam.

The TPP was signed in February by 12 participating countries — Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the US and Vietnam — after five years of negotiations.

It is now undergoing a two-year ratification period in which at least six countries — which account for 85 per cent of the combined gross domestic production of the 12 TPP nations — must approve the final text for the deal to be implemented.

China is Vietnam’s biggest trade partner and source of imports. But Vietnamese trade with the US has swelled 10-fold over the past two decades to about US$45 billion (S$62 billion), and Vietnam is now South-east Asia’s biggest exporter to America.

Underlining the burgeoning commercial relationship between the US and Vietnam, one of the first deals signed on Mr Obama’s trip was a US$11.3 billion order for 100 Boeing planes by low-cost airline VietJet.

Delivery of the Boeing 737 Max 200 planes will run for four years, beginning in 2019, and will help the carrier expand its fleet to 200 by the end of 2023, said the company in a statement.

Mr Obama kicked off his visit yesterday with a meeting with Mr Quang, followed by meetings with two others in Vietnam’s triumvirate of leaders, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Communist Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong.

Mr Obama will travel today to Vietnam’s commercial hub, Ho Chi Minh City, where he will meet entrepreneurs and visit the Jade Emperor Pagoda, built more than a century ago. AGENCIES