오바마 대통령의 TPP 실패시 미국에 재앙

http://news.einfomax.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=243036

WSJ, 오바마 대통령의 TPP 실패시 미국에 재앙

이종혁 기자  |  liberte@yna.co.kr 

 

     

 승인 2016.08.23  04:43:32         

 

(뉴욕=연합인포맥스) 이종혁 특파원 = 미국 버락 오바마 대통령이 추진한 환태평양경제동반자협정(TPP)에 불시착 비상등이 켜지고 있는 것이 아시아에 대한 외교 정책을 실패하게 할 위험을 높이고 있다고 월스트리트저널(WSJ)이 22일 보도했다.

미국이 중국의 부상을 견제하기 위해 전략적으로 추진한 TPP는 현재 공화당의 도널드 트럼프 대통령 후보뿐 아니라 같은 당인 민주당의 힐러리 클린턴 후보에 의해서도 공격받고 있다.

WSJ은 이런 환경 탓에 이 법안의 의회 비준 가능성이 작아진 것으로 보인다며 TPP의 실패는 미국이 2차 세계 대전 이후로 안보를 강조해온 아시아와에서 교역뿐 아니라 모든 것에 대한 신뢰를 훼손할 것이라고 설명했다.

호주에서 국제정책을 연구하는 로우이 연구소의 유안 그래함 안보담당 연구원은 "미국이 많은 것을 투자했다는 단순한 이유로 TPP는 경제적인 이점을 넘어서는 전체적인 가치를 가졌다"며 "아시아의 상대국과 관계를 종료하는 것은 이 지역에서 미국의 지도력에 재앙이 될 것"이라고 진단했다.

미정부는 여전히 TPP의 의회 통과에 대한 희망을 품고 있다.

WSJ은 그러나 TPP 법안은 현재 대부분 민주당 의원들에게 지지를 받고 있지 못한 데다 TPP와 다른 무역법안을 수년간 옹호해온 주요 공화당 의원들의 지지도 부족한 상태라고 설명했다.

지난주 공화당의 패트릭 투미 상원의원은 다가온 펜실베이니아주에서 재선 운동에서 노동자 계층의 표를 얻기 위해 TPP에 반대한다고 선언했다. 그는 자유시장 경제를 대표하는 성장을 위한 클럽의 전 회장이었다.

동시에 클린턴 후보도 현 상태의 TPP 법안 반대를 공식화했다. 클린턴 후보는 국무부장관 시절 이 법안을 지지한 바 있다.

WSJ은 2011년 시작된 미국의 아시아로 접근은 점차 중요성이 커지는 아시아에서 중국이 경제력을 통해 영향력을 확대하고 있다는 우려를 반영한 것이다. 최근 이 지역에서의 긴장도 남중국해에서 중국의 영토 분쟁과 한국에서 사드 미사일 설치로 커지고 있다.

지난해 최종 정리된 TPP 법안은 아메리카, 아시아, 오세아니아 지역의 나라들에서 1만8천개의 관세를 낮추는 내용을 담고 있다 

 

http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-faces-setback-in-asia-if-tpp-trade-deal-doesnt-pass-1471814373

U.S. Faces Setback in Asia if TPP Trade Deal Doesn’t Pass

Obama administration has painted Pacific pact as counterweight to the rise of China

By JOHN LYONS

Updated Aug. 21, 2016 8:09 p.m. ET

President Barack Obama’s troubled Pacific-region trade deal is threatening to become a foreign policy failure in Asia, where the U.S. loaded the accord with strategic significance as a counterweight to the rise of China.

U.S. officials have billed the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership for years as central to a shift of U.S. military and other resources to Asia. Now, with opposition toward the pact mounting on both the right and left in Washington, the likelihood of its ratification in Congress appears bleak.

Failure at this point, experts say, would dent U.S. credibility on everything from trade to its commitment to a region where U.S. might has underpinned security since World War II.

“For the simple reason that the U.S. invested so much in it, the deal acquired a kind of totalistic value that goes way beyond its economic merits,” said Euan Graham, a former U.K. foreign officer who studies regional security at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney. “To leave Asian partners hanging now would be disastrous for U.S. leadership in the region.”

The administration continues to hold out hope for the TPP’s passage. “We’re a vote away from either cementing our leadership in the region or handing the keys of the castle to China,” said U.S. Trade Representative Mike Froman.

But that argument hasn’t helped solidify backing in Congress, where the pact is opposed by most Democrats and now lacks the support of key Republican lawmakers who have championed the TPP and other trade pacts for years. Both major presidential candidates also have attacked the deal.

Last week, GOP Sen. Pat Toomey, former president of the Club for Growth, a bastion of free-market economics, came out against the TPP in a bid to win working-class voters in his close Pennsylvania re-election race.

At the same time, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who has said she opposes the pact in its current form, is under increasing pressure from the left to make a clean break with the deal, which she supported while serving as Mr. Obama’s secretary of state.

The U.S. “pivot” to Asia, unveiled in 2011, reflected concern about China’s bid to turn economic might into hard power in a region with growing importance. Tensions have risen, with China testing U.S. military dominance by making claims on the South China Sea and protesting a U.S. antimissile installation in South Korea.

The proposed pact, which was finalized last year, would cut or reduce some 18,000 tariffs for a group of Pacific Rim nations in the Americas, Asia and Oceania—an area accounting for 40% of the global economy.

China, not part of the Trans-Pacific deal, is negotiating a separate Asia pact without the U.S. China is also pledging more regional loans through a new bank and a $40 billion Silk Road fund.

Many trade experts say the Obama administration is exaggerating when it depicts the deal as a make-or-break moment for whether the U.S. or China writes the rules of global trade. The China-backed accord doesn’t create new trade frameworks: It is a run-of-the mill, tariff-cutting exercise, and less ambitious than the TPP. The two pacts aren’t mutually exclusive. Asian nations always intended to join both.

But freighting the TPP accord with geopolitical implications has raised its stakes. “For America’s friends and partners, ratifying [the trade pact] is a litmus test for your credibility and seriousness of purpose,” Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in Washington this month. Observers saw Mr. Lee as speaking for the other Asian signatories: Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, with Indonesia, South Korea and others considering it.

To be sure, the U.S. is deeply integrated with Asia through big trade relationships with China and other economies, as well as defense treaties with nations such as Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. Such U.S. ties to Asia are unlikely to change, regardless of the trade pact’s fate, many experts say.

But Asian leaders who spent political capital to support the pact will be less likely to do so again if it fizzles, experts say. Smaller countries that balance relationships with both China and the U.S. may doubt the U.S. and become accommodating to Beijing.

“Obama went around convincing countries to do things as part of an effort to show that we can stand up to China in some way,” said Yukon Huang, a former World Bank chief for China and senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “But now if it doesn’t pass, they will take a much more skeptical approach.”

Take Vietnam, seen as the pact’s big winner, with an estimated 11% boost to its economy by 2025. Four decades after fighting a war, the U.S. and Vietnam are becoming closer amid shared concerns over China’s expansion in the South China Sea, waters Vietnam also claims. This year, the U.S. lifted a ban on lethal weapons sales to Vietnam. The Communist nation got special exceptions to join the pact.

“We still hope that Obama will be able to ratify the deal during his last months in office,” said Luong Van Tu, Vietnam’s former deputy trade minister.

But no one has more at stake than Shinzō Abe, the prime minister of Japan, the closest U.S. ally in the region. Mr. Abe made the pact central to his domestic and foreign strategies—and faced significant opposition from Japan’s powerful farm lobby and other local interests to do it.

Mr. Abe’s “Abenomics” plan to pull the world’s third-largest economy from its long morass relies on the pact as a driver of growth and reform. on the international stage, the deal is also key to Mr. Abe’s broader strategy to contain China by organizing East Asian nations under an umbrella of U.S. economic influence.

If the TPP fails, “there will be a very negative impact from the viewpoint of economic security,” said Yorizumi Watanabe, a former Japanese trade official and professor at Keio University in Tokyo.

The Pacific deal was less of a strategic play when talks began under President George W. Bush. China even considered joining. That changed as China sent more outwardly aggressive signals and the Obama administration adopted it as an economic anchor for a beefed-up Asia strategy.

Ironically, the deal is stumbling now because it became too much about foreign policy and not enough about economic benefits, according to Michael R. Wessel, a member of the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

“The argument shifted very early from jobs to the need to support foreign policy goals in the region,” said Mr. Wessel, who has worked for many Democrats, as well as with labor unions that have long opposed trade deals. “Well, the American worker was sick and tired of giving up jobs for foreign policy goals.”

—William Mauldin, Chieko Tsuneoka and Vu Trong Khanh contributed to this article.

Write to John Lyons at john.lyons@wsj.com