Donald Trump moved on TPP to ease hurt from China tariffs

Donald Trump speaks in the Rose Garden of the White House. Picture: AP.

Donald Trump’s decision to order his advisers to actively examine the possibility of the US rejoining the Trans Pacific Partnership is great news for Australia, but there is a long way to go before it becomes a reality.

The great unknown — which the Turnbull government will be trying to find out — is whether the president is flirting loosely with the idea or is now genuinely committed to pursuing it.

Trump has a habit of floating major policy changes and then dropping them — think of his one-day push for tighter gun laws after the Florida school shooting.

But there are several reasons to hope that Trump is now viewing the 11 nation TPP as a benefit to the US rather than as the ‘disaster’ that he once called it.

The first is that the president is desperately looking to take some action that will limit the hurt to US farmers who stand to be the big losers from the threatened tariff trade war between the US and China.

Beijing has carefully targeted its threaten retaliatory tariffs towards US agricultural products, knowing that this will hit Trump’s political support in those farming states where his popularity is highest.

Trump has talked in recent days of US farmers as brave “patriots” saying they will understand why they have to take “a hit” for their country. But at the same time, he has been looking for something to help ease their potential pain.

When viewed from this perspective, US involvement in the TPP suddenly looks a lot more attractive for Trump. Firstly it would provide extra markets and protection for US farmers. Secondly, US membership of the TPP would give Trump another avenue to gang up on China on trade by further isolating Beijing while spreading US influence in the Asia Pacific.

Another encouraging sign is that Trump feels confident enough with his support base — which strongly backed his withdrawal from the TPP in January last year — to now openly float the notion of re-joining the multilateral pact.

It would be ironic if Trump’s moves to skewer free trade by imposing tariffs on China were to indirectly result in Washington signing up to the region’s largest free trade pact.

On the one hand it makes no sense for the president to invoke tariffs on one day and a free-trade pact on another. But these are strange days in Washington and it may well be that for Trump the TPP is an idea whose time as arrived.

Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia