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TPP if the deal were substantially better” than what the U.S. had inked earlier and, anyway, he’s
“working to make a deal with the biggest of those nations, Japan …” A few days later, he tweeted about
TPP, “I don’t like the deal for the United States … and no way to get out if it doesn’t work.” The
lawmakers have been less than pleased about the presidential head fake.

But, “It is unfortunate that the well-intentioned decision to challenge ... Chinese trade policies has
been implemented in a way that violates” the due process of World Trade Organization rules, the
wheat groups declared. They complained that Trump’s string of unilateral actions “further erodes
historical support for rules-based trade policies.”

Vetter said perhaps her biggest long-term fear for the U.S. “is the creation of doubt that we are a reliable
trading partner ... or a desirable partner for future trade agreements. That may prove to be quite
expensive in the long run.”

U.S.-Japan bilateral instead of TPP

Trump isn’t alone, though, in eyeballing both TPP and an alternative U.S.-Japan deal. “Whether (the
U.S.) gets back in (to TPP) or not is quite a dubious thing,” Grassley said recently. “A bilateral
with Japan, if we get a good one, is probably worth five times the countries all added together (in
benefits) to the United States,” he said. Japan’s economy is triple that of Australia, for example.

But costs from Trump’s TPP
exit loom and have likely
started to accrue even though
the 11 remaining nations
(Australia, Brunei, Canada,
Chile, Japan, Malaysia,
Mexico, New Zealand, Peru,
Singapore and Vietnam) in the
revised TPP, now called the
Comprehensive and
Progressive Agreement for
Trans-Pacific Partnership
(CPTPP), won’t implement it
until six have approved it.

For the U.S., however, the
value of the 12-nation
TPP projected by an AFBF
analysis, included $4.4 billion
of annual gains in U.S. net
farm income, driven by a $5.3
billion yearly increase in farm
exports. Thus, the first cost of
TPP withdrawal may be one
of forfeited business.

A slice of that added farm income would have been headed to GOP Rep. Dave Reichert’s agriculturally
diverse Washington State district, where, “40 percent of our jobs are tied to trade,” Reichert says.

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