Trump Is Pretending He Wants to Rejoin TPP

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Behold our president:

President Trump, in a stunning reversal, told a gathering of farm state lawmakers and governors on Thursday morning that he was directing his advisers to look into rejoining the multicountry trade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a deal he pulled out of within days of assuming the presidency.

Ramesh Ponnuru says: “It would be easy for Trump critics to use this episode to point out the thoughtlessness and malleability of some Trump stances and the emptiness of some of his words. Senator Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) is probably right, though, to take the high road.”

I applaud Sasse’s forbearance, but I’m not really in a high-road mood these days. My guess is that our moron-in-chief has finally figured out that TPP was, to a large extent, explicitly designed to create a trade region that excludes China, so now he’s suddenly interested in it. Or, more to the point, he says he is. I doubt that Trump actually cares much about it except as a way to make China nervous, since this kind of dimwitted bluffing is really all he knows. I imagine he’ll lose interest once the China trade war has played out. TPP haters can probably relax.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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