The New Political-economic conjuncture in the Pacific Region: Two Expressions of Protectionism

Abstract

The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans Pacific Partnership (cptpp) and President Donald Trump’s decree to impose quotas and raise tariffs on us steel and aluminum imports are expressions of protectionism: one results from the rules of the cptpp and the other one derives from the progressive deterioration of the American economy as the engine of the global system. The objectives of this paper are: to place the opposition between the Trump administration and the signatories of the cptpp in the current international economic context; to analyze the main lines of the American protec-tionism; to study the economic and political relevance of the cptpp. For now, the opposition “nationalist protectionism vs. regulated liberalization” modifies political conditions at the global, Pacific and North American scales. In the global level, the World Trade Organization (wto) has been relegated to a secondary place, by the preference of the signatories of the cptpp for regional stipulations on the omc global regulations and due to the flagrant violations of these global regulations contained in the Korea-us FTA. In the Pacific, the political impact of the cptpp will be experienced in apec; Sino-American competition for leadership tends to be replaced by the Sino-Japanese rivalry and the signatories of the cptpp are in a position to present a result in 2020 and this will be greater if they incorporate new signatories and present a common front to American protectionism. In North America, the likely scenario is the substitution of nafta for bilateral agreements. The new Korea-us fta sets the standards for new us agreements: favorable quotas for sensitive us exports; quotas and, beyond them, high tariffs for us imports; interference in the definition of national economic policies: in Korea, monetary and public expenditure policies; in Mexico, wage and migration policies, as well as combat against drug trafficking.