Rampell: With Trump trade deal, everything old is new again

So, you know, whoop de doo.

There are some new protectionist measures, such as complicated new requirements for auto rules of origin, which could potentially backfire. That is, they may end up being so costly to adhere to that they’ll encourage manufacturers to move more of their operations and jobs outside of North America.

Other stuff, such as a “sunset” provision requiring members to regularly reaffirm their desire to continue the three-party deal, is probably also not an improvement. But, again, this section is not as bad as many businesses and trade experts feared.

What’s more, some of the more significant changes — relating to issues such as labor standards, environmental protections and e-commerce — appear to be cribbed from another trade deal that Trump has demonized: the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

If you (like me) supported TPP, this is either reassuring or supremely frustrating.

President Barack Obama negotiated TPP — a 12-party pact that included Canada and Mexico — as part of his own promise to “renegotiate NAFTA.” TPP was also Obama’s strategy for keeping China from writing “the rules of the road” on trade. China was deliberately excluded from the pact, which was designed to cement a coalition of countries that had been wounded by China’s misbehavior.

Still in same position

One of Trump’s first orders of business as president, of course, was to pull out of TPP. He soon thereafter picked unnecessary trade fights with TPP countries we’d previously tried to make common cause with.

Now Trump seems to have realized his mistake. Despite how he characterizes his “historic transaction,” the USMCA is mostly just a smooshing together of two trade deals that he derided as the worst trade deals ever made.

In fact, a bunch of NAFTA 2.0 language appears squarely aimed at returning to Obama’s strategy for isolating China — which, to reiterate, only requires rebuilding because Trump destroyed it.

For instance, the NAFTA- replacement deal includes “protections against misappropriation of trade secrets, including by state-owned enterprises,” one of China’s major trade sins. There’s also language designed to disincentivize NAFTA 2.0 signatories from making free-trade deals with “non-market” countries, widely understood to be targeting China.

In other words, Trump has wrought a lot of destruction in service of landing us in roughly the same position we would have been in had we simply stayed in TPP and pursued amicable negotiations with Mexico and Canada on other outstanding issues.

Some of these harms — such as the steel and aluminum tariffs and retaliatory measures that, despite Sunday’s announcement, remain on the books — may yet be reversible. But the damage to our reputation as a reliable trading partner and ally may be irreparable. To Trump, that may be a feature, not a bug.