Yesterday, on his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order pulling the U.S. out of the negotiations over the largest free trade deal ever created, the Trans Pacific Partnership. It was a great move for American workers and was immediately celebrated by populists, nationalists, and others who put America first.



By Mark Anderson

Things are looking a lot brighter for Americans and others who’ve had their fill of treacherous trade treaties.

On Jan. 23, during his very first full day in office, newly sworn-in President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order pulling out of the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, a “crown jewel” of trade treaties in the eyes of rapacious plutocrats whose plunder via previously enacted trade treaties has so diminished the U.S. industrial base that former factory towns became “tombstones” across the country, as Trump stated in his Jan. 20 inaugural address.

Trump, who just concluded an important White House meeting with both labor leaders and corporate bosses to secure better labor-management relations, clearly saw that if past multilateral trade deals did so much damage, why should he expect a 12-nation monster like the TPP to be any better?

His press spokesman Sean Spicer clarified that the president would seek bilateral trade deals that are easier to manage and tend to preserve U.S. sovereignty.

The TPP would’ve added to the existing treachery wrought by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which has eroded nationhood through mandated globalization of production-distribution-consumption—so no one nation can stand on its own feet and limit its trading mainly to vitals that cannot be domestically produced.

Besides, the privately run banking system, and its debt-based usurious money system, tends to diminish the domestic purchasing power of individual nations, who are economically compelled to over-rely on exports so that product inventories can be sold by accessing the purchasing power of other nations.

Trump’s new strategy “starts by withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and making certain that any new trade deals are in the interests of American workers. President Trump is committed to renegotiating NAFTA. If our partners refuse a renegotiation that gives American workers a fair deal, then the president will give notice of the United States’ intent to withdraw from NAFTA,” the Trump White House’s website further explains.







United Automobile Workers (UAW) union President President Dennis Williams had this to say about the end of TPP: “UAW members around the country have long rallied against the deeply flawed corporate driven TPP that puts quarterly profits before worker paychecks. We commend President Trump for withdrawing from the TPP and congressional leaders, such as Sherrod Brown and Debbie Stabenow, for their leadership in opposing this job killing trade agreement. This is a victory for American workers and families.”

From this point onward, AFP will keep close tabs on Trump’s NAFTA actions and other trade related proposals amid his historic moves to improve America’s economic lot.

Mark Anderson is AFP’s roving editor.