Obama Presses Case for Asia Trade Deal, Warns Failure Would Benefit China
President says anti-globalization sentiments from left and right ‘a big mistake’
President Obama, in an interview with WSJ’s Jerry Seib, made his case for the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership warning that if the U.S. doesn’t enact a free-trade deal with Asia, then China will write the rules in that region. Photo: T.J. Kirkpatrick for The Wall Street Journal
WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama, facing a bitter struggle within his own party on trade policy, warned that China would step into the economic vacuum the U.S. would create if it fails to complete and enact a free-trade deal with Asia.
“If we don’t write the rules, China will write the rules out in that region,” Mr. Obama said in an interview Monday with The Wall Street Journal. “We will be shut out—American businesses and American agriculture. That will mean a loss of U.S. jobs.”
Mr. Obama also warned of rising anti-globalization sentiment in Washington, reflected in Democratic opposition to the trade agreement, Republican efforts to kill the Export-Import Bank and congressional unwillingness to approve new rules for operation of the International Monetary Fund.
“What we can’t do, though, is withdraw,” Mr. Obama said, adding: “There has been a confluence of anti-global engagement from both elements of the right and elements of the left that I think [is] a big mistake.”
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