Baker Institute expert: Abandoning the TPP largely means continuing the status quo

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David Ruth
713-348-6327
david@rice.edu

Jeff Falk
713-348-6775
jfalk@rice.edu

Baker Institute expert: Abandoning the TPP largely means continuing the status quo

HOUSTON – (Jan. 23, 2017) – President Donald Trump today signed an executive order to formally withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a 12-nation deal that had been negotiated under former President Barack Obama.

Credit: shutterstock.com/Rice University

Abandoning the TPP largely means continuing the status quo, said Russell Green, the Will Clayton Fellow in International Economics and a former U.S. Treasury Department official. “The advantages and disadvantages were all promises for the future that now will not happen,” he said. Green is available to discuss this development with the media.

“TPP could have given the U.S. big benefits in terms of soft power and setting the standard for future trade agreements, but the direct trade effects were always going to be negligible,” said Green, who served as the Treasury Department’s first financial attaché to India from 2008 to 2011. “The immediate job impact, too, was likely to be small.

“By backing out of the TPP, we lose the chance to be a manufacturing hub for more multinational firms,” Green said. “‘Made in USA’ will not be a winning strategy for, say, a European firm looking to locate a factory for global distribution. If we throw up more barriers, more will be thrown up against us. Just as our imports may fall, so will our exports.”

Green said that Mexico, on the other hand, attracts factories making goods to be distributed globally because it has free trade agreements with so many other markets.

For more information or to interview Green, contact Jeff Falk, associate director of national media relations at Rice, at jfalk@rice.edu or 713-348-6775.

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Related materials:

Green biography: http://bakerinstitute.org/experts/russell-green.

Founded in 1993, Rice University’s Baker Institute ranks among the top five university-affiliated think tanks in the world. As a premier nonpartisan think tank, the institute conducts research on domestic and foreign policy issues with the goal of bridging the gap between the theory and practice of public policy. The institute’s strong track record of achievement reflects the work of its endowed fellows, Rice University faculty scholars and staff, coupled with its outreach to the Rice student body through fellow-taught classes — including a public policy course — and student leadership and internship programs. Learn more about the institute at www.bakerinstitute.org or on the institute’s blog, http://blogs.chron.com/bakerblog.