Perspective, Ctd.

Just as I was drafting last night's blog post on the supposed "American free trade renaissance", a detailed - and totally depressing - dispatch on the Trans-Pacific Partnership arrived in my inbox from foreign policy gadfly Chris Nelson of "the Nelson Report."  Nelson collected various quotes from US and foreign business reps (aka the people who are paid to be eternal trade optimists) on the latest round of TPP negotiations in Singapore, and, boy, does it paint a different picture than the pretty one being paraded around by USTR today.  I won't bore you - and steal all of Nelson's intellectual property - by cutting and pasting the entire download, but here are the some of the lowlights (bold are Nelson's commentary; italics are quotes from his anonymous, in-the-know sources):

...the background story at Singapore TPP. Not a happy group of campers. Mexico is just saying no to everything, apparently...in contrast to Canada which is being lovely. Viets totally focused on their one chapter...textiles/apparel and shoes, and US not giving them anything to work with. No one excited about Japan, because it's really not true many chapters finally closed...nearly all still open thru brackets. So if Japan joins, the deal gets kicked further and further down the road. Oct/Bali as a deadline...a joke, and Indonesia's not in TPP anyhow. And Kirk hanging on really depressed folks. US negotiators can't show any flex, even if they wanted to, until the new guy named. Zients? Zero industry/biz support...just WH. 

... 

"Mexico seems only to have defensive issues, nothing positive except for beef. We'd thought Mexico would play a sort of supportive role as a member of the 'US bloc'. My god if we're having this hard a time now with Mexico, which is mainly fixated on its own ag and apparel issues, what will happen when Japan comes in across the board, it's one of the world's most complex economies!"  

... 

In fact, as a practical matter Japan won't be compelled to "swallow" all the already-settled chapters, for the basic reason that so many "difficult issues" remain in brackets, and thus remain to be negotiated, perhaps at the Leadership level. A related problem for the outside business observers not allowed in the room:

"We're not even allowed to know the names of the chapters at this point. It's a really stupid parlor game. That made the so-called 'stakeholder briefings' an exercise in frustration".

...

Vietnam? Not negative like Mexico, but very, very, very focused on "just one thing...textiles and apparel, and shoes", and making no bones about it. But here's the problem...so far, in the absence of new guidance from the White House (including no successor to Ron Kirk) USTR negotiators have no flexibility on textiles, apparel and shoes, even if they were so inclined, observers feel.

"So Vietnam has every right to be angry and frustrated, and in the corridors, they made no bones about it!"

Thailand has similar concerns prompting it to lay back and not decide whether to join, it's agreed.
... 

Business observers frankly confess to "not being sure what to make of the SOE [State-Owned Enterprise] issue. The Vietnamese tell us it's no longer a big problem, with SOE's now only involved in a small percentage of their economy. So we don't know what's 'reality'." 

... 

Finally, a big impediment we kept hearing about could really be called the "third problem" from above... 

"we have no USTR nominee, and that was on everyone's lips"... 

Going forward, the issue is that so long as Kirk's replacement isn't even named, much less confirmed, neither USTR negotiators, nor US trading partners, can have an intelligent discussion on possible deals on anything "sensitive", including all those pesky brackets. Business reps cite as sample problems which cannot even be approached, much less resolved until a new USTR is in place...what about US pharmaceuticals and patent protection? What about US tobacco, very important in Asia, if no longer here?
 
"With Kirk just hanging-on, no US negotiator or any trade partner can make any concessions until a replacement is confirmed, presumably also with TPA instructions, yet the US keeps pushing everyone else to put concessions on the table. How can they?"

Not a pretty sight, eh?  Maybe all of this gets worked out over the next few months, but, after reading the above, it seems that at least a little skepticism and caution is warranted.  So isn't it about time that the real TPP negotiations, the Obama administration's questionable handling of them, and the President's real trade policy get reported by the mainstream press here in the states?

Maybe that's just too much to ask.