(Courthouse News) \u2013 1\/23\/17 – President Donald Trump on Monday formally withdrew the United States from the behemoth Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, an agreement he repeatedly assailed during his presidential campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a great thing for the American worker, what we just did,\u201d Trump said after signing the executive\u00a0<\/span>order<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>as his Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus, and other members of the new White House staff looked on.<\/p>\n Negotiated under President Barack Obama, the agreement brought together the United States and 11 other nations along the Pacific Rim, including Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam, in a free-trade zone encompassing about 800 million people and 40 percent of the world\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n In addition to lowering trade tariffs among the partners, the deal also established rules for resolving trade disputes and created a framework for new protections for intellectual property.<\/p>\n The TTP was one of the few areas that Obama and congressional Republicans agreed upon during his eight years in office \u2014 House Speaker Paul Ryan even led his GOP colleagues in granting the Obama fast-track authority to negotiate the deal \u2014 but congressional Democrats vehemently opposed it, saying it benefited corporations and hurt American workers and the environment.<\/p>\n Because the agreement was never ratified by Congress, Trump\u2019s decision to withdraw from it Monday is not expected to have an immediate,\u00a0tangible effect on the U.S. economy. However, it signals the beginning of a new era \u2014 and philosophy \u2014 in U.S. trade policy, and is seen by many as\u00a0Trump\u2019s first concrete move to\u00a0dismantle the legacy of former President Obama.<\/p>\n But Arizona Sen. John McCain, a champion of the agreement, said walking away from it is a \u201cserious mistake that will have lasting consequences for America\u2019s economy and our strategic position in the Asia-Pacific region.\u201d<\/p>\n President Trump also signed memorandums freezing most federal government\u00a0<\/span>hiring<\/a>, though he noted an exception for the military, and reinstating a\u00a0<\/span>ban<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>on providing federal money to international groups that perform abortions or provide information on the option.<\/p>\n The regulation, known as the \u201cMexico City Policy,\u201d has been\u00a0instituted by Republican administrations and rescinded by Democratic ones since 1984.<\/p>\n In regard to the federal hiring freeze, the White House said the government\u2019s workforce has expanded significantly during the last two Administrations, from approximately 1.8 million civilian employees during the Clinton Administration to approximately 2.1 million as of 2016 \u2014 an increase of nearly 17 percent.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the administration said, federal employee health and retirement benefits continue to be based \u201con antiquated assumptions and require a level of generosity long since abandoned by most of the private sector.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThose costs are unsustainable for the federal government, just as they are proving to be unsustainable for state and local governments with similar health and retirement packages,\u201d the administration said in a statement.<\/p>\n Of the Mexico City Policy, the White House said \u201cPresident Trump issued a memorandum reestablishing the Mexico City Policy. Under this initiative, the United States will end the use of U.S. taxpayer dollars to fund abortions overseas, along with coercive abortion and sterilization practices.\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier on Monday, Trump met with business leaders and\u00a0told them that while he thought they were all \u201cgreat people,\u201d\u00a0if they are tempted to move manufacturing or other operations to another country, \u201cwe are going to be imposing a very major border tax\u201d on the products their overseas facilities produce.<\/p>\n \u201cAll you have to do is stay,\u201d he told the corporate titans who joined him for breakfast in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.<\/p>\n He also promised tax advantages to companies that produce products domestically, saying he fully intends to\u00a0follow through on a campaign promise to cut regulations by at least 75 percent.<\/p>\n The business leaders meeting with Trump on Monday morning included Elon Musk, the head of SpaceX; Michael Dell, of Dell Inc.; Jeff Fettig, chairman and CEO of Whirlpool Corp.; Alex Gorsky, chairman and CEO of Johnson & Johnson; Marillyn Hewson, chairman and CEO of\u00a0Lockheed Martin, and Mario Longhi, president and CEO of United States Steel Corp.<\/p>\n The session kicked\u00a0off Trump\u2019s first working day as president, a day on which he also met with labor leaders to discuss the economic policies he intends to pursue and his intention to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.<\/p>\n At the morning meeting, Trump asked the business leaders to come up with a plan within the next 30 days to boost the nation\u2019s manufacturing sector.<\/p>\n Among the new president\u2019s guests at the session was Mark Fields, the president and CEO of Ford Motor Co., which canceled plans to build a $1.6 billion plant in Mexico after Trump tweeted his intentions to punish one of Ford\u2019s competitors, General Motors CO., for building a factory in south of the border.<\/p>\n After the meeting, Fields told waiting reporters that he\u2019s confident Trump will work to create jobs.<\/p>\n Toward that end, Trump\u00a0tasked the group of business leaders to come up with a series of actions to help stimulate the American manufacturing sector within the next 30 days.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we want to do is bring manufacturing back,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are going to be cutting taxes massively for both the middle class and for companies, and that\u2019s massive,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n The White House touted the afternoon meeting in a couple of different ways. Initially it was described as a \u201clistening session with union leaders and American workers.\u201d By Monday afternoon, the overt reference to unions was dropped and the meeting was dubbed a \u201clistening session with American workers.\u201d<\/p>\n Nevertheless, most of the attendees came from a spectrum of unions, among them\u00a0Mark Coles of the Ironworkers, Local 5; Joseph Sellers of the Sheet Metal Workers\u2019 Union; and Doug McCarron and Thomas Flynn of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a group I know well,\u201d trump said as he entered the room shortly after 3 p.m., adding \u201cI\u2019ve hired thousands and thousands of you.\u201d<\/p>\n When Trump told the union officials he\u2019d terminated the\u00a0Trans-Pacific Partnership, many in the room applauded.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are going to put a lot of people back to work,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n Moments later, the pool reporters covering the event were being\u00a0ushered out of the room when McCarron began praising Trump on his inaugural address.<\/p>\n Trump immediately asked the union official to wait while the reporters could be reassembled.<\/p>\n \u201cHey press, get back in here,\u201d the president yelled.<\/p>\n After the pool was back in position, McCarron repeated his assessment of the speech. \u201c<\/p>\n It hit home for the people who have been hurting,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (Courthouse News) \u2013 1\/23\/17 – President Donald Trump on Monday formally withdrew the United States from the behemoth Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, an agreement he repeatedly assailed during his presidential campaign. \u201cThis is a great thing for the American worker, what we just did,\u201d Trump said after signing the executive\u00a0order\u00a0as his Chief of Staff, Reince […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17847"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17848,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17847\/revisions\/17848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}