Much like in 2024, the Presidential Campaigns of 2016 saw Hillary Clinton promising to continue the economic strangling policies of the Obama administration.
Donald Trump ran a campaign where he declared he would implement economic policies that put the nation’s interests first.
And on January 23, 2017, Trump destroyed the globalist policies the Obama administration had implemented that he believed were ravaging the U.S. economy.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership
The origins of the U.S. involvement in the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) can be traced back to Barack Obama in 2009 when he announced his intent to fast-track the globalist trade agreement.
Obama claimed the agreement reflected the U.S. economic priorities and values.
Globalists claimed the purpose was for the 12 participant nations from the Pacific Region to put in place measures to reduce reliance on trade with China, boost economic growth, boost jobs, increase exports, and reduce tariff and non-tariff barriers by essentially eliminating the restrictions of international trade.
But deep within the document were aspects of economic control that were not about trade at all.
Julian Assange, of Wikileaks fame, revealed information that showed the proposed TPP agreement was written with a hidden agenda, declaring, “It is mostly not about trade, only 5 of the 29 Chapters are about traditional trade!”
One significant underlying intent was to regulate the Internet and the information that service providers could collect and how that information would be used.
Assange further stated that the information collected could be used for, “. . . the regulation of labor conditions, regulating the way you can favor local industry, regulating the hospital, health care system, privatization of hospitals, so essentially every aspect of a modern economy, even banking services are in the TPP.”
He went on to say, “The TPP has developed in secret an unaccountable supranational court for multinationals to sue states. This system is a challenge to parliamentary and judicial sovereignty. Similar tribunals have already been shown to chill the adoption of sane environmental protection, public health and public transport policies.”
Ron Paul also warned at the time that it was “going to be a big boost for world government.”
“These other items are big items for special interest groups . . . they will deal with wages, unions, environmentalism, human rights, you can think of all the cans of worms they’ll open with that,” he added.
The real power of the TPP was in giving private corporations and lobbyists the abilities to have significant influence and circumvent government environmental, health, trade, and construction regulations as they saw fit.
The agreement was, in short, nothing more than a big government power-grab pushing the world closer to world government.
Even with all of the highly controversial and contentious provisions that empowered the privatization and control of so many aspects of the economic infrastructure, representatives of twelve countries, including Barack Obama, rammed through and signed the agreement on February 4, 2016.
Putting America First
Incoming President Donald Trump was not a fan of the TPP.
He saw it as 100% detrimental to the United States.
In 2016, on the campaign trail, he declared, “The Trans-Pacific Partnership is another disaster done and pushed by special interests who want to rape our country, just a continuing rape of our country. That’s what it is, too. It’s a harsh word: It’s a rape of our country.”
He felt that the agreement was so badly framed for U.S. interests that “There’s no way to fix the TPP.”
On January 23, 2017, President Donald Trump issued a Presidential Memorandum to the United States Trade Representative, Robert Lighthizer, that stated, “It is the policy of my Administration to represent the American people and their financial well-being in all negotiations, particularly the American worker, and to create fair and economically beneficial trade deals that serve their interests. Additionally, in order to ensure these outcomes, it is the intention of my Administration to deal directly with individual countries on a one-on-one (or bilateral) basis in negotiating future trade deals.”
The memo further stated, “Trade with other nations is, and always will be, of paramount importance to my Administration and to me, as President of the United States.”
The memo, concluded with, “You are directed to provide written notification to the Parties and to the Depository of the TPP, as appropriate, that the United States withdraws as a signatory of the TPP and withdraws from the TPP negotiating process” and authorized Lighthizer to publish the memo in the Federal Register.”
Trump withdrawing the U.S. was the final coffin nail that killed the agreement.
When asked about why he withdrew, the President stated, “What we’ve done with the decision to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership is to create an incentive for our trading partners to diversify, to look for their own way, to have conversations and negotiations in which we will not be participants.”
Trump further stated that he “would only negotiate trade deals with individual allies,” meaning that the U.S. would establish its own trade policies and tariffs on its own terms.
CPTPP
After the U.S. withdrew from the TPP, the 11 remaining nations strived to salvage the agreement.
The agreement passed under the name of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and went into effect in December 2018.
When Joe Biden became President, he said he would revisit the original TPP agreement, but the idea garnered little support at the time, even within his own party.
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