TRUMP USES PRESIDENTIAL PEN TO VOID OBAMA'S CORRUPT TPP DEAL AS PROMISED

TRUMP USES PRESIDENTIAL PEN TO VOID OBAMA'S CORRUPT TPP DEAL:

ANOTHER TRUMP CAMPAIGN PROMISE ENACTED WITHOUT LONG SPEECHES.

GOD BLESS AMERICA AND THE U.S. MILITARY.


Sources: C-SPAN, Fox News, NY Times, YouTube


**** Trump Abandons Trans-Pacific Partnership, Obama’s Signature Trade Deal


President Trump upended America’s traditional, bi-partisan trade policy on Monday as he formally abandoned the ambitious, 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership brokered by his predecessor and declared an end to the era of multinational trade agreements that defined global economics for decades.


With the stroke of a pen on his first full weekday in office, Mr. Trump signaled that he plans to follow through on promises to take a more aggressive stance against foreign competitors as part of his “America First” approach.


In doing so, he demonstrated that he would not follow old rules, effectively discarding longstanding Republican orthodoxy that expanding global trade was good for the world and America — and that the United States should help write the rules of international commerce.


Although the Trans-Pacific Partnership had not been approved by Congress, Mr. Trump’s decision to withdraw not only doomed former President Barack Obama’s signature trade achievement, but also carried broad geopolitical implications in a fast-growing region.

The deal, which was to link a dozen nations from Canada and Chile to Australia and Japan in a complex web of trade rules, was sold as a way to permanently tie the United States to East Asia and create an economic bulwark against a rising China.

Instead, Mr. Trump said American workers would be protected against competition from low-wage countries like Vietnam and Malaysia, also parties to the deal.


But some in both parties worry that China will move to fill the economic vacuum as America looks inward, and will expand its sway over Asia and beyond.


Monday was a busy day for the new president. In addition to abandoning the trade deal, he ordered a freeze on federal government hiring, except for the military and other security agencies.

He reinstituted a ban on federal funding for overseas family planning groups that assist or counsel women seeking abortions. He met with congressional, labor and business leaders. And he promised to cut up to 75 percent of federal regulations.

Mr. Trump’s decision to scrap the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or T.P.P., reversed a free-trade strategy adopted by presidents of both parties dating back to the Cold War, and aligned him more with the political left.


When he told a meeting of union leaders at the White House on Monday that he had just terminated the pact, they broke into applause.


“We’re going to stop the ridiculous trade deals that have taken everybody out of our country and taken companies out of our country, and it’s going to be reversed,” Mr. Trump told them, saying that from now on, the United States would sign trade deals only with individual allies. “I think you’re going to have a lot of companies come back to our country.”

Mr. Trump may also move quickly to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. He is scheduling meetings with the leaders of Canada and Mexico, the two main partners in that pact, which was negotiated by President George Bush and pushed through Congress by President Bill Clinton.


While Nafta has been a major driver of American trade for nearly two decades, it has long been divisive, with critics blaming it for lost jobs and lower wages.

But free-trade advocates said that in canceling the Pacific pact, Mr. Trump lost an agreement that had already renegotiated Nafta under more modern rules governing intellectual property, internet access and agriculture, since both Mexico and Canada were signatories.

He also undercut Mr. Obama’s so-called pivot to Asia and, critics said, essentially ceded the field to China, which was not part of the agreement.


“There’s no doubt that this action will be seen as a huge, huge win for China,” Michael B. Froman, the trade representative who negotiated the pact for Mr. Obama, said in an interview. “For the Trump administration, after all this talk about being tough on China, for their first action to basically hand the keys to China and say we’re withdrawing from our leadership position in this region is geostrategically damaging.”

Some Republicans agreed, but only a few would publicly challenge the president. Senator John McCain of Arizona called the decision “a serious mistake” that would hurt America. “It will send a troubling signal of American disengagement in the Asia-Pacific region at a time we can least afford it,” he said in a statement.


The Obama administration negotiated the trade pact for nearly eight years. Speaker Paul D. Ryan and other congressional Republicans worked with Mr. Obama to pass legislation granting so-called fast-track authority to negotiate it over Democratic objections.

But Mr. Obama never submitted the final agreement for approval amid vocal opposition.

The agreement, the largest regional trade accord ever, brought together the United States and 11 other nations in a free-trade zone for about 40 percent of the world’s economy. It was intended to lower tariffs while establishing rules for resolving trade disputes, setting patents and protecting intellectual property.

Obama officials argued that it benefited the United States by opening markets while giving up very little in return. In particular, it finally brought the United States and Japan, the world’s largest and third-largest economies, together in a free-trade pact.

Mr. Trump’s decision was crushing for Japan, where Prime Minister Shinzo Abe spent considerable political capital to get the agreement through Parliament, which ratified it Friday.


Just hours before Mr. Trump dispensed with it, Mr. Abe told Parliament that Tokyo would lobby the new administration on the merits of the deal.

Japan was the last to join the pact, which would give its manufacturers tariff-free access to export markets in the United States and other Asian countries, but would bring its automakers into competition with lower-wage countries like Mexico.

Mr. Abe became a strong enthusiast after making politically painful concessions on agricultural imports that the United States had sought.


China, by contrast, welcomed Mr. Trump’s move, although its leaders will probably relish the moment quietly.

Given Mr. Trump’s harsh attacks on China and his appointment of a leading China critic, Peter Navarro, to the new post of trade council director, Beijing is bracing for a potentially combative relationship.

Victor Shih, an expert on China’s political economy at the University of California, San Diego, said withdrawing from the T.P.P. would alter America’s image in the region. “The U.S. will be seen as an unreliable partner both economically and perhaps even in the security arena,” he said. “While some countries in Asia have no choice but to be close to the U.S., others may begin to look to China.”


China has already sought to capitalize by making a push to complete an alternative pact, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which aims to unite 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations with Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and India.

Australia’s trade minister, Steven Ciobo, said on Monday that other members of the trade pact were exploring whether to create a “T.P.P. minus one,” without the United States.


“The T.P.P. offers very material benefits for all parties that signed up for the agreement,” he said in an interview. “It would be a great shame to lose those benefits. Notwithstanding President Trump’s decision, there’s still a lot of merits to capturing those gains.”

If Mr. Trump scrambled coalitions overseas, he did so at home, too.


Democrats and labor groups praised his move. James P. Hoffa, general president of the Teamsters union, said Mr. Trump had “taken the first step toward fixing 30 years of bad trade policies.” Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, said it would “bury the moldering corpse” of the Pacific deal, though she expressed concern about how Nafta would be renegotiated.


Some people emerging from the union meeting with Mr. Trump, who won surprising victories in Midwestern labor strongholds, expressed enthusiasm for both his trade action and his promise to build new roads, bridges and other infrastructure.


“We just had probably the most incredible meeting of our careers,” Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trades Unions, said. “We will work with him and his administration to help him implement his plans on infrastructure, trade and energy policy, so we really do put America back to work.”

Obama's 2010 Asia Trip To Create Jobs In U.S. Or India?

Obama Focuses On Economy, Both At Home And Overseas

President Obama heads to Asia Friday as part of an effort to improve U.S. trade relations, but experts say the president's perceived anti-trade rhetoric has complicated the process of reaching agreements that could benefit the U.S. economy.

Following election losses which signaled the administration should have focused more closely on the economy, the president's nine-day trip features an economy-related event in each of the four countries he's to visit.

In his post election news conference Wednesday, Mr. Obama acknowledged the American public was primarily focused on one issue in the voting booth. "I think that there is no doubt that people's number one concern is the economy," the president said. "And what they were expressing great frustration about is the fact that we haven't made enough progress on the economy."

It's a frustration the president plans to address with his Asian tour.

"The primary purpose is to take a bunch of U.S. companies and open up markets so that we can sell in Asia, in some of the fastest growing markets in the world. And we can create jobs here in the United States of America," President Obama said after meeting with his cabinet Thursday.

"My hope is that we've got some specific announcements that show the connection between what we're doing overseas and what happens here at home when it comes to job growth and economic growth," he added.

One specific achievement the White House hopes to announce: a deal with India, the first stop on the trip, to purchase ten Boeing C-17s. The deal, which would include training and ground equipment, could be worth as much as $5.8 billion dollars and create jobs.

The other tangible agreement the administration is hoping for: a free trade agreement with Korea. According to a statement released by the White House, Mr. Obama spoke with South Korea's President Lee Myung-bak Tuesday and expressed his hopes in using their upcoming meeting in Seoul to solidify a deal.

"If we can reach a satisfactory agreement on the key issues for American workers, we will have a deal," the statement read.

But experts say that the Asia swing is not just meant to reassure the voting public that Mr. Obama is focused on the economy, the trip is also meant to send a message to worried Asian partners. "The big mess the president has to cope with...is the economic message," says Ernie Bower of the Center for Strategic & International Studies.

While in India, Mr. Obama is scheduled to address the U.S. India Business and Entrepreneurship Summit. He will also meet with a group of U.S. CEO's in India to "discuss the opportunities and challenges of doing business in India." Among the CEOs: David Cote of Honeywell, Jeffrey Immelt of GE, Terry McGraw of the Mcgraw Hill Companies, Jim McNerney of Boeing and Indra Nooyi of Pepsico.

In Indonesia, the president will deliver a "major speech" in which he will stress the Muslim majority country's growing role in the international economy. In Seoul, he will be joining other leaders at the G-20 Summit to discuss international economic issues such as the global financial crisis and currency revaluation. Finally, Mr. Obama will head to Japan for the 18th APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting.

"Every leader is going to grab him by lapels and ask him, ‘How is the U.S. economy and is it recovering, and when are you getting back to a leadership role on trade?'" Bower says.

Experts say the perceived weakness of the U.S. economy and fears of rising U.S. protectionism create major economic uncertainties for Asian economies that are reliant on U.S. consumers to drive exports.

Some argue the president's "misguided rhetoric" on the campaign trail didn't help matters.

"The president would be wise to drop once and for all the divisive line about shipping jobs overseas -- it doesn't do much politically or diplomatically," said Dan Griswold of the CATO Institute in Washington.

"India in some ways is a challenging stop for the president because during the campaign, he made a big fuss of tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas," said Griswold.

Just last month, President Obama focused on this topic in his weekly address.

"For years, our tax code has actually given billions of dollars in tax breaks that encourage companies to create jobs and profits in other countries," Mr. Obama said who then turned his criticism to the GOP. "Over the last four years alone, Republicans in the House voted 11 times to continue rewarding corporations that create jobs and profits overseas -- a policy that costs taxpayers billions of dollars every year. That doesn't make a lot sense. It doesn't make sense for American workers, American businesses, or America's economy."

Of course, the president did acknowledge in this October 16 address that, "A lot of companies that do business internationally make an important contribution to our economy here at home. That's a good thing." Nonetheless, experts say the president will have to address his own "divisive" rhetoric once in Asia.

"So the president has been on the one hand, in the heat of the campaign, demonizing that economic integration, and on the other hand, he's going to go over there and what's he going to say?" asks Griswold.

"I think what he's going to see on the ground over there will be in direct contradiction to the way he was mis-portraying things on the campaign trail," says Griswold who argues the economic success in Asia, specifically in India, is in part because the country has followed the U.S. model of doing business, and those achievements should be praised.

"Our big ace in the hole with India is the growing commercial relationship and the president should be celebrating it, not demonizing," as he did during the midterm election cycle, Griswold argues.





Fuzzy Math Dogs Obama’s Asia Trip

As if Tuesday’s "Shellacking" wasn’t enough, President Barack Obama is getting pilloried by the right on the cost of his 10-day trip to Asia, with outlandish hyperventilation going directly from suspect Indian media reports to conservative U.S. media outlets and commentators without a pause for fact-checking.

First, the Press Trust of India reported that Mr. Obama’s entourage would be spending $200 million a day for two days in India, a claim that was quickly repeated last night by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R., Minn.) on CNN. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said, “The numbers reported in this article have no basis in reality,” and are “wildly inflated,” but “due to security concerns,” he would not offer an alternative price tag.

Snopes.com, a website devoted to myth busting, noted that even if the Indian press has correctly reported the size of the president’s entourage – 3,000 – the cost would work out to $66,000 per person per day, “a figure that stretches credulity to the breaking point.” Factcheck.org noted that the entire war in Afghanistan costs $190 million a day.

But the report is demonstrably incorrect. It says the White House had blocked off the entire Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai – it hasn’t – and that the press traveling with Mr. Obama will be staying there. We won’t. Besides, the press pays its own way at considerable cost to the media outlets, not the U.S. taxpayer.

Now a new rumor has emerged courtesy of India’s NDTV. Mr. Obama, the outlet says, “will be protected by a fleet of 34 warships, including an aircraft carrier, which will patrol the sea lanes off the Mumbai coast.” The White House called that ridiculous. But on the conservative Drudge Report website, it’s on the home page – in huge type.





U.S. To Spend $200 MN A Day On Obama's Mumbai Visit

The U.S. would be spending a whopping $200 million (Rs. 900 crore approx) per day on President Barack Obama's visit to the city.

"The huge amount of around $200 million would be spent on security, stay and other aspects of the Presidential visit," a top official of the Maharashtra Government privy to the arrangements for the high-profile visit said.

About 3,000 people including Secret Service agents, US government officials and journalists would accompany the President. Several officials from the White House and US security agencies are already here for the past one week with helicopters, a ship and high-end security instruments.

"Except for personnel providing immediate security to the President, the US officials may not be allowed to carry weapons. The state police is competent to take care of the security measures and they would be piloting the Presidential convoy," the official said on condition of anonymity.

Navy and Air Force has been asked by the state government to intensify patrolling along the Mumbai coastline and its airspace during Obama's stay. The city's airspace will be closed half-an-hour before the President's arrival for all aircraft barring those carrying the US delegation.

The personnel from SRPF, Force One, besides the NSG contingent stationed here would be roped in for the President's security, the official said.

The area from Hotel Taj, where Obama and his wife Michelle would stay, to Shikra helipad in Colaba would be cordoned off completely during the movement of the President.


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Sources: Asia Society, CNN, Drudge Report, Fact Check, Fox News, NDTV, Snopes.com, Wall Street Journal, Yahoo News, Youtube, Google Maps

David Goldman & Son Sean Head Home To New Jersey

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N.J. Father David Goldman and Son Fly Home From Brazil



A U.S. congressman said a New Jersey man and his 9-year-old son left Brazil today at the end of a five-year International Custody battle.

Rep. Chris Smith said David Goldman and the boy, Sean, are on their way to the United States on a charter plane.

They left Rio de Janeiro about three hours after the boy's Brazilian relatives handed him over at the U.S. consulate today.

Brazil's Supreme Court chief justice two days ago had ordered the boy handed over to Goldman.

The pair were expected to fly back to the Goldman's home in New Jersey within hours.

David Goldman, of Tinton Falls, has been trying to gain custody of his son again since his ex-wife took the 9-year-old to her native country. But family members and child psychology experts are concerned that Sean's re-acclimation to life in the United States may be a difficult one.

Leslie Goldman last saw her nephew dashing around with his cousins at a backyard birthday party five years ago, about a week before he was taken to Brazil by his mother.

When the 9-year-old eventually returns to New Jersey, she said she doesn’t expect the same Sean to step off the plane. "I’m sure it’s not going to be all smooth sailing, and I know we’ll have some help with that," Leslie Goldman said Wednesday of the boy’s re-adjustment "It won’t be easy, but it will be easier than having him there."

On Wednesday, the bitter five-year battle to regain custody of Sean, by his father David Goldman of Tinton Falls, neared conclusion when the child’s Brazilian family halted its legal efforts as a court-ordered deadline for delivering the boy loomed.

A Federal court in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday gave the boy’s Brazilian family until 9 a.m. today to return Sean to his father.

But even after all the legal victories David Goldman has had in the long custody battle, the boy’s relatives in New Jersey remained guarded.

"We’ve come really close many times," Leslie Goldman said. "I’ve been down this road before so it doesn’t feel like anything until he really comes home."

Both the U.S. and the Brazilian governments have said the matter fell under the Hague Convention, which dictates children who are abducted should be returned to their "habitual residence" custody should go to the parent in the country where the child orignally lived -- for Sean Goldman, the United States.

The boy, whose mother died last year in childbirth, has lived in Brazil with his stepfather and other relatives. His maternal grandmother said yesterday Sean was upset by the decision and wants to remain in Brazil.

"We think we’re truly at the end of this ordeal," U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-4th Dist.), who traveled to Brazil to support David Goldman, said in an interview Wednesday from a Marriott hotel in Rio de Janeiro, where the congressman has been camped out for several days with Goldman and a team of his attorneys. "We have no reason to believe it will not be enforced."





The seemingly endless court battle may be over, but transporting a boy primarily raised in Brazil to live with relatives he may not fully remember in New Jersey will add its own traumas, according to child therapists.

Children under the age of 5 usually retain few memories, so the boy’s recollections of his family and experiences here are likely be very limited, said Lawrence Shampain, a child psychiatrist at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

Adjusting to a new culture and language will make his re-introduction to life in the U.S. significantly more difficult than most family or marital separations, which can often include weekend visitations or vacation time spent between relatives, he said.

"In divorce, usually there’s some contact in the relationship, but this is really a complete break, so it’s everything to the extreme," Shampain said. "He might experience more anxiety, maybe depression."

In addition to the loss of his father and relatives in New Jersey, the boy recently dealt with the death of his mother in Brazil, Shampain noted. The psychological impact of transporting him to New Jersey could be very similar to that of an adoption, he believes.

Ideally, Sean Goldman will be able to sustain a relationship with his family in Brazil, provided the family is able to move beyond the hostility of a drawn-out legal battle, said Peggy Brady-Amoon, a psychologist who teaches in the graduate counseling program at Seton Hall University.

"Children do well when the adults in their lives are able to communicate," Brady-Amoon said. "We know this from children who have thrived despite their parents’ divorces."

If the boy is given enough space to build up trust with his new family, "the fact that he’s young will likely be to his advantage," she added. "Giving him time to play, to reflect, to talk about it at his own pace, will help him transition well. Children are extremely resilient."

There will likely be struggles ahead for David Goldman, too, she said. Sean may not be as affectionate or trusting as his father initially hopes, and it could take a long time to re-establish their relationship.

"He doesn’t really know his son, and his son doesn’t know him," Shampain agreed. "He doesn’t know his son’s habits, he doesn’t know his son’s likes and dislikes, who this nine-year-old is."

Yet friends insist David Goldman is willing to do what it takes. He sat in his hotel room for hours yesterday, checking his e-mail on a laptop for updates from the U.S. Embassy in Brazil, anxiously awaiting his son with a plastic bag filled with Christmas presents, they said.

"I know first-hand this is a loving and caring father who will make sure he does everything he needs to do for Sean," said Mark DeAngelis, a friend who lives in Holmdel. "He just wants to spend time to rebuild his relationship with his son. And Sean’s got his grandparents, aunts and uncles here, too -- I think he’ll be fine."



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Sources: NJ.com, MSNBC, NBC New York, AP, Youtube, Google Maps