Close on the heels unveiling his “America First” policy push, President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order to pull the United States out of the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
Trump projected the action as “a great thing for the American workers”. The move, however, is regarded by his critics as a mere formality since the pact, actively pursued by the Obama administration, was never ratified by US Congress.
Trump has been a virulent opponent of the TPP in the course of his presidential campaign. He has also been a critic of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), taking the stand that he would renegotiated it to serve US interests better.
“If I can’t make a great deal, we’re going to tear it (NAFTA) up. We’re going to get this economy running again,” he had tweeted back in October.
Trump signed the executive order on TPP after holding a meeting with corporate bigwigs on what was a packed first official day at the White House. It was followed by meetings with labour leaders and top lawmakers.
Bringing back American jobs has been Trump’s avowed aim, but Democrats have questioned his assertions that NAFTA has proved to be inimical to the US interests. Mike Froman, US Trade Representative under former President Barack Obama, has sought to point out that US manufacturing exports to Canada and Mexico rose by 258 per cent under the agreement that was piloted by the Bill Clinton administration back in 1994.
During his meeting with corporate leaders, Trump held out the promise of tax cuts, slashing of regulations and incentives for producing and hiring within the United States, but made it clear that he would punish businesses that move out of the country by imposing a “very major” border taxes on such companies.
“If you go to another country...we are going to be imposing a very major border tax,” he told the business leaders, who included CEOs from Ford, lockheed Martin, Tesla, Dell, United Technologies, Under Armour and Whirlpool.
Apart from cutting taxes for the middle class and businesses, Trump promised to slash government regulations by as much as 75 per cent in order to stimulate growth and create jobs.
After a bumpy inaugural weekend that was marked by a face-off with the media, Trump began what he touted as a busy opening week with its primary focus on jobs and national security.
On Sunday, after swearing-in a host of his White House aides, Trump had revealed that he would soon be holding meetings with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. Referring to the meeting with the Mexican leader, he said that apart from NAFTA, discussions would also deal with immigration and border security.
Also on Sunday, Trump held a telephone conversation with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from the Situation Room. He later described it as a “very nice” conversation, without going into details. The White House later said that Netanyahu had accepted an invitation to visit Washington next month.
“As I said in my inaugural address, this is not about party. It’s not about ideology. It’s about country, our country, and it’s about serving the American people,” Trump said on Sunday as he spoke at the White House East Room.
Even while pushing ahead with governance issues, the Trump administration let it be known yet again on Sunday that it could “rethink” its relationship with the media if it continued its push to “delegitimise” President Trump through false reporting.
“There’s an obsession by the media to delegitimise this President, and we are not going to sit around and let it happen. We’re going to fight back tooth and nail every day,” White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus told Fox News in an interview — a day after Trump himself called journalists “the most dishonest human beings on Earth”.
Priebus said the media, from day one, had been talking about delegitimising the election, talking about the Russians and talking about everything except the fact that the country needed to be moved forward.