President Trump has directed his top economic and trade advisers to look into re-entering the Trans-Pacific Partnership, nearly a year after he withdrew the U.S. from the multilateral trade agreement in of his first acts as president.
Trump told a group of Republican senators during a meeting Thursday that he had assigned National Economic Council Chairman Larry Kudlow and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer “the task of taking another look at TPP,” Sen. Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, told reporters at the White House.
“We’re very excited about seeing those trade opportunities reaffirmed,” said Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., who was also present for the meeting. Fischer said Trump also mentioned “the importance” of the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, which his administration is currently renegotiating with Canada and Mexico.
Trump told the room “multiple times” that he was deputizing Lighthizer and Kudlow to review possible re-entry into the TPP, according to Sen. Ben Sasse, who has been a leading critic of the president’s trade policy and recent tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.
“Clearly, it’s a deliberative process, and the president is somebody who likes to blue sky a lot, [but] he… reaffirmed the idea that TPP would be easier for us to join now,” Sasse said, adding that Trump turned to Kudlow during the meeting and said, “Larry, go get it done.”
Trump floated the idea of re-entering the TPP as recently as January, telling CNBC at the time that he would consider signing back onto the agreement “if we were able to make a substantially better deal.”
Those comments marked a stark departure from Trump’s campaign rhetoric on the trade deal, which he once referred to as “a continuing raping of our country.”
“The Trans-Pacific Partnership is another disaster, done and pushed by special interests who want to rape our country,” then-candidate Trump said during an Ohio campaign rally in June 2016.
