During his trip to Asia, President Donald Trump boasted that he would reach multiple business deals and multibillion-dollar military sales with the countries he visited, promising to reveal more when he comes back, even though it remains unclear whether these announcements will have a positive outcome. However, in the course of the past 12 days, it also became evident that he had made very little progress on his promise to replace multilateral trade agreements with bilateral, a focal point of his “America first” vision.
“None of the trading partners, particularly in Asia, seem to be enthused about such a prospect,” said Wendy Cutler, vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute and a longtime U.S. trade official.
This became particularly apparent while Trump was in Vietnam when 11 countries of the Pacific Rim struck a deal to move on with the Trans-Pacific Partnership without the U.S. The United States withdrew from the pact with an executive memorandum signed by President Trump only days after taking office. The other nations included in the agreement are not interested in negotiating separate deals with the U.S., according to Harry Kazianis from the Center for National Interest.
Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso said last week that Japan was not planning to negotiate a bilateral trade agreement with the U.S., but would rather try to decrease the trade deficit with the United States by means of more modest steps. Many Asian nations may wait to see what happens with the U.S. NAFTA negotiations with Canada and Mexico and the nuclear crisis before considering signing bilateral agreements with the United States.
Heritage Foundation fellow Stephen Moore supported Trump, calling him “a negotiator” and saying that “these countries need to trade with the United States more than we need to trade with them. Why not use that as a bargaining chip? Trump doesn’t have to be in a huge hurry to get this done.”
Just before his return to the U.S. Trump tweeted that his meetings in Asia are a start toward trade deals “unlike the horror shows from past Administrations.”
“After my tour of Asia, all Countries dealing with us on TRADE know that the rules have changed. The United States has to be treated fairly and in a reciprocal fashion. The massive TRADE deficits must go down quickly!”
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