TPP Trade Agreement a "Top Priority" for Second Obama Administration

With just two months until the next (16th) round of negotiations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) begin in Singapore, supporters of the inaptly named “free trade agreement” are ratcheting up the number of reports favorably promoting formation of the regional trade bloc.

In an article published by World Politics Review, for example, Edward Alden writes that the Obama administration’s acceptance and acceleration of the TPP is the “biggest swerve” away from a global Great Depression.

Alden writes:

The global financial crisis of 2008 and the recession that followed produced the first steep decline in world trade since the Great Depression. Yet rather than falling down, the United States and other countries have managed to swerve and keep going.

 

The biggest swerve was the embrace of regional trade liberalization, starting with Asia.

Identifying the TPP as the president’s “top trade priority,” Alden suggests that the “embrace of regional trade liberalization” will keep the United States from falling down the steep decline toward economic devastation.

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