That’s the easy part. President-elect Donald Trump went on YouTube to announce two of his goals. The first was to show the print and television moguls who have been coming and going from Trump Tower in an effort to work out a modus vivendi with the president-elect that he doesn’t need them to get his message through to the American people. The more important one was to announce that on day one of his administration he would file a “notification of intent to withdraw” from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a step in removing the cornerstones from the Obama Legacy edifice. Since that partnership lacks the necessary Senate ratification and has never been in operation, Trump is withdrawing from something that in effect does not exist. Easy.
Unfortunately, our negotiator-in-chief to be ignored one of the rules followed by all good negotiators: Anticipate what your partners and adversaries will do. Which was, in the case of our eleven TPP partners, notably including traditional ally Australia, to scurry for the shelter of China’s 16-member Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which excludes America. The result is that America’s influence in the region has declined further, and China’s influence has soared. Trump saw TPP as a trade deal, when in reality it was an attempt to have America, rather than China, set the rules of trade in the Pacific region—the world’s fastest growing one. And because TPP members Peru and Chile will now join the Chinese group, China gets the bonus of extending its influence throughout Latin America, an area America has considered in its sphere of influence ever since 1823, when President Monroe issued his famous Doctrine, in effect warning other nations to stay out of Latin America.
