- Do Progressives Really Find "White Trash" More Threatening Than Nuclear War?
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
The American electorate’s preference for Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders has established two facts. One is that the majority of the American people do not believe the media presstitutes. The other is that only the “progressives” and “liberals” who inhabit the Atlantic Northeast and Pacific West coasts believe the presstitutes.
Trump’s election to the presidency has confirmed these holier-than-thou souls in their strongly held belief that America is a white trash racist country. They have told us this all day long today.
From these people and from the presstitutes we hear that white supremacy elected Trump. This is their propaganda, the intention of which is to discredit a Trump administration before it is inaugurated. Funny how white supremacy elected black Obama twice previously.
Truthout has lost it completely. John Knefel declares “The David Dukes of the World Prevail.”
Kelly Hayes declares “White Supremacy Elected Donald Trump.”
William Rivers Pitt declares “We have elected a fascist that Mussolini would have recognized on sight.”
Hillary carried only a handful of states, the states that comprise the One Percent’s stomping grounds. Yet Amy Goodman of Democracy Now sees meaning in political writer John Nichols claim that as Hillary carried New York and California, she won the popular vote and should be in the White House. I remember a few days ago George Soros saying that Trump would win the popular vote, but that the electoral vote would go to Hillary, thus ridding the oligarchs of Trump.
Earth Justice promises to hold Trump accountable. Trump who promises to end the threat of nuclear war with Russia and China, thereby doing more to save animal and human life than the entirety of the Democratic Party and environmental organizations, is going to be held accountable by an organization that allegedly is beyond politics and is dedicated to preserving animals from destruction.
The ACLU, of which I am a member, has also put “on notice” the president-elect who has said he will save us from nuclear war. Faced with this idiocy from the ACLU, I will not renew my membership.
Feminists tell us that we are “grieving, scared, and in shock,” and that “it is critical that we stand together and support each other.”
Jeremy Ben-Ami of the J Street Jewish Community tells us that it is “an incredibly sad and difficult day. For tens of millions of Americans who share a core belief in tolerance, decency and social justice, the election results are a severe shock. In this challenging moment, we turn to one another for comfort and community. During this election, J Street made unequivocally clear our conviction that Donald Trump is not fit to be president of the United States.”
Van Jones, a CNN commentator, said that Trump’s election is a nightmare, “a deeply painful moment,” a “whitelash” against minorities. While he bemoaned the pain inflicted upon poor little presstitute Van Jones, he didn’t mind insulting the American electorate and the President-elect of the United States. After all, Van Jones sees that as his racist prerogative.
And so, the holier-than-thou crowd prefers Hillary, despite her unambiguous position that she would maximize conflict with Russia and China, provoke direct military conflict between the US and Russia by imposing a no-fly zone in Syria, attack Iran and other of Israel’s targets, further enrich her Wall Street handlers by privatizing Social Security, and prevent any dissent from the lowly people class of her high-handed ways. If William Rivers Pitt sees Trump as a Mussolini fascist, Trump is too mild for Pitt. He prefers Hillary, a Hitler to the third power.
The progressives have totally discredited themselves just as the presstitutes have done. Their need for a bogyman to nourish their hysteria indicates serious psychological disturbance. They actually prefer the risk of Armageddon to peace among nuclear powers. As their 501(c)3s live off corporate contributions, they prefer globalist corporate profits to jobs for ordinary Americans.
These are the people who think of themselves as our instructors and our betters.
If only Trump could exile the lot of them. They are anti-American to the core.
- OreGONE – Oregon Joins California In Proposal To Secede After Trump Victory
Just yesterday we wrote about the “Calexit” proposal that was starting to gather steam after Trump’s historic victory on Tuesday night. Now The Oregonian points out that a group in Oregon has also filed the “Oregon Secession Act” in response to the perceived notion that “Oregonian values are no longer the values held by the rest of the United States.” But, unlike the Calexit proposal, the distraught Hillary supporters in Oregon are thinking big picture and have invited the states of California, Washington, Hawaii, Nevada and Alaska to all band together to form a new nation.
On Thursday morning, Jennifer Rollins, a lawyer, and Christian Trejbal, a writer, filed the Oregon Secession Act.
“Oregonian values are no longer the values held by the rest of the United States,” Trejbal said over the phone Thursday.
Those values? “Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness,” Trejbal said, “plus equality.”
“Obviously,” he said, the ballot proposal “came about partially in response to the election results on Tuesday.”
Trejbal said that joining forces with other states like Washington, California and Nevada is “a viable way to go forward.”
These states, he said, “could all get together and form a nation that uphold the values that we share.”
To start the ballot title drafting process, the Oregon Secession Act must receive 1,000 signatures. Trejbal said he and Rollins would be at Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland on Thursday night to begin the process of getting those signatures.
And here is the full 1-page proposal…clearly they put a lot of time and effort into this between their violent protest sessions and crying fits.
The good thing is that the devastated Hillary supporters are moving through the “7 Stages of Grief” pretty quickly as they seem to have already reached stage 4 after only 3 days. That said, we suspect the depression stage could last for a little while…college professors shouldn’t expect our snowflakes to be taking tests for at least another couple of weeks.
- Paul Joseph Watson Crushes The Hypocrisy Of The Left And Their "Temper Tantrum"
Earlier today, Paul Joseph Watson posted the following epic video in which he systematically destroys the utter hypocrisy of the left for, among other things, failing to denounce the violent riots flaring up across the country in response to Trump’s victory. The whole video is a must see but below is just a small selection of our favorite quotes:
“After weeks of taunting Trump supporters, over Trump’s suggestion that he might not immediately accept the election results, Hillary voters came together preached the message of unity and graciously accepted Donald Trump’s victory. Oh no, they actually rioted, attacked people in the street and threatened to kill Donald Trump and his supporters.“
“All year they denounced us as being hateful and intolerant. And what’s the first thing they do after the election? Engage in rampant hateful intolerance.“
“Seriously, has anyone told you people you can’t change the outcome of democratic election by throwing a temper tantrum.”
“Your behavior is why Trump won in the first place. Do you understand that yet?“
- Never Forget!
Thank you…
Veterans Lives Matter…
98 years ago today, the guns of the Great War fell silent after four years of unimaginable suffering and destruction. The Battle of the Somme was the largest battle on the Western Front during World War 1 with more than a million men killed or wounded. Today is Armistice Day and Statista's infographic below looks at at the estimated casualties of World War 1's most horrific battle.
You will find more statistics at StatistaAmericans shed some guilt for sending young soldiers to war by saying “thank you for your service” but it’d be better to ask vets about their war experiences, says ex-U.S. Army chaplain Chris J. Antal who served in Afghanistan (via ConsrtiumNews.com)…
Veteran’s Day too often only serves to construct and maintain a public narrative that glorifies war and military service and excludes the actual experience of the veteran. This public narrative is characterized by core beliefs and assumptions about ourselves and the world that most citizens readily accept without examination.
The U.S. public narrative reconciles deep religiosity with a penchant for violence with an often unexamined American National Religion. The core beliefs of this religion include the unholy trinity of governmental theism (One Nation Under God, In God We Trust, etc.), global military supremacy, and capitalism as freedom. These core beliefs provide many U.S. citizens with a broad sense of meaning and imbue the public narrative with thematic coherence.
War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, as Christopher Hedges wrote. Yet this kind of coherence has a moral and psychological cost. The consequence of an unexamined faith in American National Religion is a moral dualism that exaggerates U.S. goodness and innocence and projects badness on an “other” who we then demonize as the enemy and kill.
Walter Wink described this moral dualism as a “theology of redemptive violence,” the erroneous belief that somehow good violence can save us from bad violence.
Veteran’s Day, in the context of American National Religion, enables selective remembering, self-deception, and projected valorization. In short, it serves to perpetuate lies in order to avoid facing uncomfortable truths about who U.S. citizens are and what kind of people we are becoming.
Imagine a Veteran’s Day where citizens gathered around veterans and asked, “what’s your story?” Citizens who risk this bold step begin to bridge the empathy gap between civilians and veterans and open up the path for adaptive change and post-traumatic growth.
I believe one citizen who approaches a veteran with the invitation, “what’s your story?” does more for the veteran than a thousand patriotic platitudes like “Thank you for your service” could ever do.
Only a First Step
Asking the question is only the first step. A citizen who wants to give back to veterans should cultivate narrative competence, the capacity to recognize, absorb, interpret, and be moved by the stories one hears or reads. The voice of veterans, if we open our ears to hear them, often provides an essential counter-narrative to the U.S. public narrative.
Violent, sudden, or seemingly meaningless deaths, the kind of deaths often experienced by veterans, can make the world appear dangerous, unpredictable, or unjust. The experience of warfare can often undercut our sense of meaning and coherence and shatter assumptions. Because of this many veterans carry a depth of pain that is unimaginable to many citizens.
The voice of the veterans often reveals uncomfortable truths and invites collective examination of core beliefs and assumptions, especially those that form the bedrock of American National Religion.
Imagine a Veteran’s Day where communities join together for authentic dialogue between veterans and civilians. Such a gathering would empower veterans to share the kind of stories that would help the community face real problems. What new story might emerge in the process? How might we become a better people as a result?
- The Clintons And Soros Launch America's Purple Revolution
Submitted by Wayne Madsen via Strategic-Culture.org,
Defeated Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is not about to «go quietly into that good night». On the morning after her surprising and unanticipated defeat at the hands of Republican Party upstart Donald Trump, Mrs. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, entered the ball room of the art-deco New Yorker hotel in midtown Manhattan and were both adorned in purple attire. The press immediately noticed the color and asked what it represented. Clinton spokespeople claimed it was to represent the coming together of Democratic «Blue America» and Republican «Red America» into a united purple blend. This statement was a complete ruse as is known by citizens of countries targeted in the past by the vile political operations of international hedge fund tycoon George Soros.
The Clintons, who both have received millions of dollars in campaign contributions and Clinton Foundation donations from Soros, were, in fact, helping to launch Soros’s «Purple Revolution» in America. The Purple Revolution will resist all efforts by the Trump administration to push back against the globalist policies of the Clintons and soon-to-be ex-President Barack Obama. The Purple Revolution will also seek to make the Trump administration a short one through Soros-style street protests and political disruption.
It is doubtful that President Trump’s aides will advise the new president to carry out a diversionary criminal investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s private email servers and other issues related to the activities of the Clinton Foundation, especially when the nation faces so many other pressing issues, including jobs, immigration, and health care. However, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz said he will continue hearings in the Republican-controlled Congress on Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, and Mrs. Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin. President Trump should not allow himself to be distracted by these efforts. Chaffetz was not one of Trump’s most loyal supporters.
America’s globalists and interventionists are already pushing the meme that because so many establishment and entrenched national security and military «experts» opposed Trump’s candidacy, Trump is «required» to call on them to join his administration because there are not enough such «experts» among Trump’s inner circle of advisers. Discredited neo-conservatives from George W. Bush’s White House, such as Iraq war co-conspirator Stephen Hadley, are being mentioned as someone Trump should have join his National Security Council and other senior positions. George H. W. Bush’s Secretary of State James Baker, a die-hard Bush loyalist, is also being proffered as a member of Trump’s White House team. There is absolutely no reason for Trump to seek the advice from old Republican fossils like Baker, Hadley, former Secretaries of State Rice and Powell, the lunatic former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, and others. There are plenty of Trump supporters who have a wealth of experience in foreign and national security matters, including those of African, Haitian, Hispanic, and Arab descent and who are not neocons, who can fill Trump’s senior- and middle-level positions.
Trump must distance himself from sudden well-wishing neocons, adventurists, militarists, and interventionists and not permit them to infest his administration. If Mrs. Clinton had won the presidency, an article on the incoming administration would have read as follows:
«Based on the militarism and foreign adventurism of her term as Secretary of State and her husband Bill Clinton’s two terms as president, the world is in store for major American military aggression on multiple fronts around the world. President-elect Hillary Clinton has made no secret of her desire to confront Russia militarily, diplomatically, and economically in the Middle East, on Russia’s very doorstep in eastern Europe, and even within the borders of the Russian Federation. Mrs. Clinton has dusted off the long-discredited ‘containment’ policy ushered into effect by Professor George F. Kennan in the aftermath of World War. Mrs. Clinton’s administration will likely promote the most strident neo-Cold Warriors of the Barack Obama administration, including Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, a personal favorite of Clinton».
President-elect Trump cannot afford to permit those who are in the same web as Nuland, Hadley, Bolton, and others to join his administration where they would metastasize like an aggressive form of cancer. These individuals would not carry out Trump’s policies but seek to continue to damage America’s relations with Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, and other nations.
Not only must Trump have to deal with Republican neocons trying to worm their way into his administration, but he must deal with the attempt by Soros to disrupt his presidency and the United States with a Purple Revolution
No sooner had Trump been declared the 45th president of the United States, Soros-funded political operations launched their activities to disrupt Trump during Obama’s lame-duck period and thereafter. The swiftness of the Purple Revolution is reminiscent of the speed at which protesters hit the streets of Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, in two Orange Revolutions sponsored by Soros, one in 2004 and the other, ten years later, in 2014.
As the Clintons were embracing purple in New York, street demonstrations, some violent, all coordinated by the Soros-funded Moveon.org and «Black Lives Matter», broke out in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Oakland, Nashville, Cleveland, Washington, Austin, Seattle, Philadelphia, Richmond, St. Paul, Kansas City, Omaha, San Francisco, and some 200 other cities across the United States.
The Soros-financed Russian singing group «Pussy Riot» released on YouTube an anti-Trump music video titled «Make America Great Again». The video went «viral» on the Internet. The video, which is profane and filled with violent acts, portrays a dystopian Trump presidency. Following the George Soros/Gene Sharp script to a tee, Pussy Riot member Nadya Tolokonnikova called for anti-Trump Americans to turn their anger into art, particularly music and visual art. The use of political graffiti is a popular Sharp tactic. The street protests and anti-Trump music and art were the first phase of Soros’s Purple Revolution in America.
President-elect Trump is facing a two-pronged attack by his opponents. One, led by entrenched neo-con bureaucrats, including former Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency director Michael Hayden, former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, and Bush family loyalists are seeking to call the shots on who Trump appoints to senior national security, intelligence, foreign policy, and defense positions in his administration. These neo-Cold Warriors are trying to convince Trump that he must maintain the Obama aggressiveness and militancy toward Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and other countries. The second front arrayed against Trump is from Soros-funded political groups and media. This second line of attack is a propaganda war, utilizing hundreds of anti-Trump newspapers, web sites, and broadcasters, that will seek to undermine public confidence in the Trump administration from its outset.
One of Trump’s political advertisements, released just prior to Election Day, stated that George Soros, Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, and Goldman Sachs chief executive officer Lloyd Blankfein, are all part of «a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities». Soros and his minions immediately and ridiculously attacked the ad as «anti-Semitic». President Trump should be on guard against those who his campaign called out in the ad and their colleagues. Soros’s son, Alexander Soros, called on Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and her husband Jared Kushner, to publicly disavow Trump. Soros’s tactics not only seek to split apart nations but also families. Trump must be on guard against the current and future machinations of George Soros, including his Purple Revolution.
- What Donald Trump's Proposed Tax Cut Means For You
Now that Trump is president, both individual and corporate tax-payers are taking a second look at Trump’s proposed tax regime to see how it will impact their bottom line.
Here is a quick primer.
Trump has proposed personal and business tax reform that would reduce tax revenues by an estimated $4.4 trillion over ten years, or roughly 1.9% of GDP over that period. Alternatively, this also means that GDP will grow by roughly the same amount, all else equal, with incremental debt use to fund the shortfall. Roughly half of this cost is estimated to come from his proposed corporate tax reform plan, which would reduce the corporate income tax rate to 15% and would impose a one-time 10% tax on all foreign earnings not yet taxed by the US.
Companies would be free to repatriate earnings without additional tax once this tax has been paid. Like the House Republican proposal, this would involve a transition to a new corporate tax system for taxing foreign earnings. The two plans are similar in several other respects as well, including a top individual marginal tax rate of 33%. However, the House Republican plan is estimated to cost around half as much over the next ten years as Mr. Trump’s plan, at least in part because it proposes to go further in limiting or eliminating existing individual and corporate tax preferences.
This is summarized in the chart below. The good news is that virtually all entities and income tax brackets will pay less taxes compared to Obama’s 2017 Budget (assuming Trump does not change his mind on this framework). The bad news, is that even more debt will be used to replace it, and should foreign buyers balk at US obligations it will require more deficit monetization courtesy of the Fed and another QE episode.
Which brings us to the second point: will Trump’s tax plan pass? According to Goldman Sachs, the tax legislation has a good chance of passing in 2017, but it is not expected to reduce revenues by as much as Trump has proposed. There are three potential obstacles to its passage:
- First, the cost is likely to be prohibitive for some members of Congress. While the majority party is able to pass tax legislation with only a simple majority in the Senate using the budget reconciliation process described above, it would require near-unanimity among the 52 Republicans in the Senate next year to do so. The prevailing expectation is that some Republican lawmakers would balk at the deficit impact of his proposal.
- Second, while the House Republican proposal would increase the deficit less, it has also generally been proposed in the context of the broader Republican budget proposal, which would also reduce spending in several areas. Mr. Trump has not proposed a significant net spending reduction.
- Third, tax reform is complicated, and even under a unified Republican government, it may be too complex to resolve in a matter of months.
Ultimately, the outlook for a tax cut depends on how willing marginal Republican lawmakers are to increase the deficit, and/or how willing they are to find offsetting savings elsewhere. Overall, there is a good chance that some type of tax legislation passes next year, but the obstacles to comprehensive tax reform go beyond partisan disputes, so one should expect tax legislation that is adopted in 2017 to be narrower in scope than the campaign proposal, and significantly smaller in its revenue effect; in other words much of this week’s market rally – driven by hopes of tax-cut boosted economic growth and consumer spending – will be for nothing.
- This Trophy Of Mainstream Media Arrogance Can Be Yours For Only $250
As we pointed out last weekend, with several days to go before the presidential election on November 8th, bookstores around the country started receiving a curious commemorative edition of Newsweek with their chosen candidate on the cover. As Infowars reported, the magazines went viral when a Twitter user, who works at one of those bookstores, tweeted the images with the comment, “I work at a bookstore and we typically get magazines early and lookie what we got here.”
While Newsweek later explained that they had created 2 versions of the magazine with Trump and Hillary on the cover, apparently they made a “business decision” to only print the “Madam President” version.
Bet @mghnbtts wishes she didn’t break @Newsweek embargo.
Shut down account after fueling Trumpists’ hysteria about “rigged” #Election2016 pic.twitter.com/ZvsPyjUOVn— Luke Costin (@LukeCostin) November 7, 2016
Now, you too can own your very on own piece of the mainstream media’s arrogance courtesy of numerous Ebay auctions looking to fetch a couple hundred dollars for the ill-advised magazines. Somehow we suspect these “collectors editions” will end up as stocking stuffers for many Hillary supporters this holiday season.
And while this is certainly embarrassing for Newsweek, it’s not the first time the arrogant mainstream media got caught off guard.
- A Visit To Trump's America
Authored by retired bank CEO Edward Speed, originally posted at TheRivardReport.com,
Two months ago, when I was in Ohio visiting my daughter, I was given an insight into the early indicators of a Trump victory. The clues were there, but I didn’t fully understand what I was seeing. At that time, I had no inkling of the depth and breadth of rural dissatisfaction that would elect a Donald Trump as President.
I’m a photographer and the coordinator of The Texas Farm and Ranch Photography Project, photographing the daily lives of farm and ranch families, their work, meals, worship, and family life. In September, I drove almost 300 miles up and down the rural roads east of Dayton and south of Columbus, Ohio, to add some farm images to my portfolio.
Mile after mile, farm after farm, town after town, ag business after ag business, I saw only Trump signs. It was obvious that if Ohio was going to block Trump, it would have to be in the cities because agricultural Ohio was overwhelmingly Trump country. This mirrored the same Trump support that I saw in the agricultural communities I have been photographing across Texas for the past year.
As I engaged in countless conversations in both rural Ohio and Texas, I tried to understand how any farming or ranching family could even remotely identify with a brash, thrice-married, womanizing, bankruptcy-declaring, New York billionaire.
What I learned is that agricultural America felt not only ignored and forgotten, it felt rejected and despised by America’s political elite, and that any candidate who could hurt that elite was worth their vote.
No story brought this home to me more powerfully than a grandfather who spoke of national news stories about what he described as the whining and crying on elite college campuses by those who demanded “safe places” and “safe zones” where they will be sheltered from anything that remotely offends them. He spoke of ingrates wanting special “only me” safe places where they do not have to do anything, hear anything, see anything, or be around anyone or anything they don’t like.
In that farmer’s mind, while the safe-space crowd whined about its “offendedness” and demanded entitlements, children of agricultural families were up early in the morning working on their chores and projects, followed by a full day at school, coming home to more work – all while being part of a family, a community, and a nation.
He described watching youngsters at county fairs and livestock shows hauling feed, cleaning stalls, washing and grooming livestock, shoveling manure, unloading and loading their family trucks and trailers, and trying to sleep in uncomfortable chairs – all while ungrateful elite college students failed to appreciate their pampered lives.
In this gentleman’s world view, it was not black versus white, rich versus poor, feminism versus patriarchy, illegal versus citizen; rather, it was those who produce nothing believing themselves entitled, without appreciation, to the goods produced by others versus those who actually produce.
Although this grandfather did not use the exact words, he pretty much described a political elite and liberal establishment as thinking of American agriculture families as nothing more than serfs in a self-protecting, self-serving feudal system.
A ranch mom whose family I photographed in far West Texas alluded to the Black Lives Matter movement by telling me that unless America starts recognizing that Farm Lives Matter, no lives are going to matter.
Rural and agricultural America has revolted against this perceived feudal system in an unimaginable way. It voted not only out of feelings of rejection and abandonment, but also out of the sentiment of being taken for granted. The result was an agricultural electorate that rose up against urban elites who they believed show only disdain and ridicule to those who endure the back-breaking work and financial hardships required to feed our nation.
As a result, hard-working, long-suffering agricultural families sent Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party, and the perceived political establishment to bed without their supper.
They also sent a powerful message and reminder that our food does not spring magically from grocery stores.
Agricultural America helped deliver the White House to Trump, then got up early the next morning and went back to its daily, unending chores.
- ObamaTrade Is Dead: White House Abandons TPP As EU Halts Trade Talks After Trump Victory
It appears the entire ‘ObamaTrade’ farce is collapsing under the weight of its secrecy and corporatocracy in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s triumph. First this morning, Bloomberg reported that EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said EU-U.S. negotiations on a free-trade agreement are on hold, and now WSJ reports that the Obama administration on Friday gave up all hope of enacting its sweeping Pacific trade agreement, denting American prestige in the regions at a time when China is flexing its economic and military muscle.
Just days after Donald Trump won the election, all of Washington’s major trade deals are dead or dying.
As Joe Joseph reports, both Mexico and Canada have agreed to re-negotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) signed under President Clinton.
You have the Canadian Prime Minister and his Mexican counterpart that are now saying, “hey buddies… hey United States… we want to renegotiate NAFTA.”
…Maybe, just maybe, we might actually have a little bit of justice… he hasn’t even taken the oath of office yet.
Trump lashed out at market-opening initiatives such as the planned Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, during his successful campaign to succeed U.S. President Barack Obama. Trump, the Republican Party’s candidate, defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 election.
“With the new president-elect, we don’t really know what will happen,” Malmstrom told reporters on Friday in Brussels. “There is strong reason to believe that there will be a pause in TTIP, that this might not be the biggest priority for the new administration.”
The EU and U.S. have spent three years working on an accord to expand the world’s biggest economic relationship by eliminating tariffs on goods, enlarging services markets, opening public procurement and bolstering regulatory cooperation. Obama and European leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel had called TTIP a policy priority.
Both sides have held 15 rounds of talks since 2013. The last round took place in October in New York.
“Whether it makes sense to have new rounds — well probably not,” Malmstrom said on Friday.
Just days after Donald Trump surprise victory, U.S. officials said Republican congressional leaders had made clear that they wouldn’t consider the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership in the remainder of Mr. Obama’s term. The White House had lobbied hard for months in the hope of moving forward on the pact if the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, had won.
The failure to pass what is by far the biggest trade agreement in more than a decade is a bitter defeat for Mr. Obama, whose belated but fervent support for freer trade divided his party and complicated the campaign of Mrs. Clinton.
The TPP’s collapse also dents American prestige in the region at a time when China is flexing its economic and military muscle.
The 2016 election season has shown that domestic concerns about globalization, the trade deficit and stagnant wages easily beat out the appetite for international engagement. The TPP became a symbol Washington pursuing policies that disproportionately favor wealthier Americans over ordinary workers. Mr. Trump blamed the TPP on special interests trying to “rape” the country.
As we detailed previously, Trump was right on Trade Agreements.
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