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The Bigot[emoji]8482[/emoji] backing out of the TPP will end up hurting the people who voted for him, ironically.
U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to back out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, a $62 billion market for U.S. farmers, provides a fresh threat to a slumping agricultural economy that has grown increasingly dependent on exports.
Agricultural groups expressed disappointment over the move and urged the new administration to find alternative ways to boost product shipments to Asian countries. Trump announced the cancellation on Monday, quickly fulfilling a campaign promise.
Trump won nearly two-thirds of the rural vote in November, with big agricultural states including Iowa, Nebraska, Ohio and Indiana all lining up for the Republican.
The TPP, which was never approved by Congress, was a 12-nation trade pact which the Obama administration framed as way for the United States to establish economic leadership in the region. But Trump, who wants to boost manufacturing, claimed the deal hurt the U.S. job market.
"The TPP held great promise for us, and has been a key priority for several years now. We're very disappointed to see the withdrawal," said Ron Moore, president of the American Soybean Association.
The United States is a net exporter of agricultural goods, and shipments to the 11 other countries in the TPP deal totaled $61.735 billion in 2015, latest data shows. The Obama administration had touted TPP as a trigger for further gains. At its annual Outlook Forum in 2016, the USDA had themed its trade-related sessions "U.S. Exports in the warm glow of a completed Trans-Pacific Partnership."
Trump signaled he wants to strike trade pacts with individual countries instead of joining TPP, said U.S. Senator Charles Grassley, a Republican from Iowa. The message to the country was: "I like trade and we need to negotiate down barriers," Grassley told reporters on a conference call on Tuesday.
Negotiating bilateral deals could take years, though, Grassley said, adding that "it's just not an easy thing to do." Japan is the top priority, he added.
U.S. farmers and trade groups are also concerned that backing out of the deal could provide other countries with better access to China, a major agriculture goods importer that was not part of the TPP negotiations.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-agriculture-idUSKBN1582O9U.S. meat exporters could have made their biggest potential gains in Japan, which bought $2.88 billion of U.S. beef and pork in 2015, and Vietnam if TPP had been implemented, said Joe Schuele, federation spokesman. He declined to quantify in dollar amounts those possible gains.