ITC finds deal would return paltry GDP and employment growth, and actually reduce U.S. factory jobs.
Bad news for people who like surprising news: A just-released report from the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) projects that a completed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) won’t produce much of a boost for the American economy.
ITC report may help #TPP opponents way more than they were expecting. It's easy to point to projected economic gains as almost negligible.
— Victoria Guida (@vtg2) May 19, 2016
Reuters summed it up justly with a perfectly milquetoast headline: “U.S. trade panel says TPP would have small positive effect on growth.” Doesn’t exactly send a thrill up your spine, does it?
Probably not. But while every interest group with a dog in the TPP fight will take what it wants from this report – TPP advocates, for instance, are happy with its findings – here’s what it predicts specifically: The country’s GDP would be about .15 percent higher and there would be roughly 128,00 American jobs in 2032 if the Pacific-rim trade deal comes to fruition. What’s more, American manufactured goods exports would be more than $15 billion higher than without the agreement, but that gain would be eclipsed by the $39.2 billion bump in imports.
Also worth noting: None of those jobs will be in the manufacturing; the ITC review finds fewer factory jobs will be created should the TPP pass.
That’s basically the same conclusion that the widely respected (and pro-trade) Peterson Institute for International Economics came to: the TPP will mean fewer factory jobs.
Other reports are far less optimistic. One cranked out earlier this year, by the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, actually found that the TPP will result in net losses in GDP and unemployment.
And lest you forget – because we’ve said it an awful lot around here – the TPP, as it stands, does nothing to address the issue of currency manipulation (that currency side agreement is pretty toothless). So if this is the standard-setting agreement the Obama administration claims it is, then the failure to deal with currency is a real missed opportunity. An Economic Policy Institute analysis found America’s trade deficits with other TPP countries will only increase without a currency rule.