TRUMP WATCH: Joining the Trade Pact Against China

This week more of my TRUMP WATCH articles were published on Impakter:

•  TWEETS OF WAR warning the enemy - in this case Russia - of an impending missile strike in Syria (click here to read - updated with the news of the retaliatory attack on 14 April);  
• HALF THE COUNTRY IS THE ENEMY: in this one Trump takes aim at California, reviling it as a "sanctuary state" overrun by hordes of criminal immigrants, ascribing the whole sorry situation to the "Dems" (see here);
• CHEMICAL ATTACKS ON SYRIA: about Trump's unprecedented tweets against Russia and the fact that, arguably, Trump's own policies in Syria set the stage for "animal Assad's" attacks (see here - also updated with the news of the retaliatory attack 14 April).

Here's the latest one, JOINING THE TRADE PACT AGAINST CHINA, out on Friday 13 April:

Trump just woke up to the complexities of international trade. And how to push China into a corner. In the middle of his trade war with China, he has suddenly caught on to the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership: a clever way for the US to boost trade among Pacific-rim countries while excluding China.

In the middle of the night, this stunning mea culpa was tweeted out:

Would only join TPP if the deal were substantially better than the deal offered to Pres. Obama. We already have BILATERAL deals with six of the eleven nations in TPP, and are working to make a deal with the biggest of those  nations, Japan, who has hit us hard on trade for years!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 13 aprile 2018

Well, only half a mea culpa. As usual, it’s Obama’s fault, and he “would only join TPP if the deal were substantially better than the deal offered to Pres. Obama.”

He may feel he has saved face, but in practice, this signals a major reversal in Trumpian trade policies. For once, he’d be joining an international treaty and not trying to pull it down.

And that is huge. Good for him to be able to backtrack.

I go on to analyze the damage done by the US pullout of the TPP and what might happen next now that the TPP has been signed by 11 Pacific rim countries, excluding the US.  

Just as the article was about to be published with a conclusion commending Trump for his wise decision to backtrack (never easy), he blew it, coming out with a seriously absurd blast against Comey and his tell-all book, calling him (among other things) a "slime ball".

Take a look, the article is here.