Jaime Fuller lays out the goals of Obama’s four-country Asia trip, which began yesterday in Japan:
For this trip, this renewed effort at pivoting will focus on two policies in particular — finishing up the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-country free-trade agreement that has been in the works for five years, and an agreement with the Philippines giving U.S. ships and planes more access to bases there than they’ve had since 1992. In 1991, the country asked the United States to leave Clark Air Base and the Subic Bay naval facility. The military isn’t planning to establish a permanent base again; it is just instituting rotating deployments and stocking up supplies in case of a disaster — a plan similar to one recently instituted with Australia.
Obama will also be talking to Japan about plans to revamp its military. International decisions made at the end of World War II have left Japan with a small military, but the country’s new conservative prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has made revitalizing Japan’s defense and armed forces a priority. The United States likely sees Japan’s morphing role in the region — and growing tensions between Japan and China — as an important aspect of any changes to its role there. Obama’s trip to Tokyo in 2009 was the first presidential trip to Japan since 1996.
Fred Kaplan notes that the visit has been overshadowed by events in Ukraine:
This week’s trip was planned as a makeup session of sorts. Obama’s main goals were, first, to allay the allies’ concerns about America’s commitment to their security in the face of an expansive Chinese navy and, second, to complete a trade treaty, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which has been central to Obama’s vision of a rebalanced foreign policy.
But, once again, life has gotten in the way.
The spotlight has turned, improbably, to Ukraine. Not only has Russian President Vladimir Putin’s land grab riveted everyone’s attention, it also threatens to upend the whole concept of the pivot, at least for a while. The concept, as Obama initially laid it out, rested on three premises: a desire to get out of the Middle East’s quagmire-wars; a view of Asia-Pacific as the emerging center of dynamic growth; and an almost unspoken assumption (it seemed so obvious at the time) that Europe needed no special minding, that the era of crises on the continent had passed. The first premise is still laudable, the second still persuasive, but the third … well, clearly, the map of Europe is no longer so stable.
Fuller follows up with a refresher on the TPP and why everyone hates it:
As the Financial Times sums up the debate, “But what, precisely, is the Trans-Pacific Partnership? To some, it is the ‘gold standard’ of trade deals. They argue that the 12-member club of aspiring free-trade purists led by the US can jump-start the stalled multilateral Doha round, which the World Trade Organisation initiated in 2001 to break down global trade barriers. To opponents, the TPP is a ‘giant corporate power grab’ that would endanger food safety, access to medicines and national sovereignty.”
The TPP is very large and broad. Think of it like an omnibus bill in Congress, where a bunch of the treaty’s drafters get to toss in pork to keep their constituencies happy. No one is completely happy when an omnibus bill is passed. Same deal here. The TPP covers so many different industries, that few people remain who aren’t worried about what the final treaty may contain. Many of the complaints leveled against the Trans-Pacific Partnership are the same that were made against NAFTA 20 years ago.
Richard Stubbs blames the impasse over the deal on competing American and Asian versions of capitalism:
[O]f all the obvious divisions among the 12 TPP participants it is the clash of capitalisms that is the most difficult to overcome. The Anglo-American participants, especially the US, firmly believe in a market-led approach to economic growth. The Asian partners – notably Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam – however, achieved much of their remarkable economic success by relying on a state-guided approach to economic development. These competing visions of how to advance economic growth affect nearly every one of the many issues that need to be negotiated – tariff elimination, reductions in non-tariff barriers, investment safeguards, protecting intellectual property rights and so on.
Clearly the leaders of the Asian partners hoped that by joining the TPP negotiations they would gain access to the US market and force their own economies into further economic liberalisation without arousing too much opposition. But they have become trapped between the rigidity of the US negotiating position and increasing resentment at home as the details of the secret negotiations have been made available.
The Dish 