TPP will boost US economy 0.15%

[Independent voter]

This oh so this. Can you accurately predict 1000 coin tosses in a row? That in essence is what the article presupposes the economic modellers have done.

meh, someone in a government office somewhere has to file such a report. You can't go into something like TPP completely blind.

It's scientific guess, a hunch.

[alexw]

meh, someone in a government office somewhere has to file such a report. You can't go into something like TPP completely blind.

It's scientific guess, a hunch.

Its not scientific. There are things we can model. There are things we cannot. The economy with all of its variables is something that can only be modeled in the broadest terms and even then not very accurately. Change just one of the variables they used by a small amount and you would get a completely different answer.

[Deleted]

Its not scientific. There are things we can model. There are things we cannot. The economy with all of its variables is something that can only be modeled in the broadest terms and even then not very accurately. Change just one of the variables they used by a small amount and you would get a completely different answer.

Just because it's hard doesn't mean it's impossible. There are several instances where economic models have worked perfectly well. A growth of 0.15% isn't something radical or hardly a surprising number to reach. So yes, it's very much scientific.

[alexw]

Just because it's hard doesn't mean it's impossible. There are several instances where economic models have worked perfectly well. A growth of 0.15% isn't something radical or hardly a surprising number to reach. So yes, it's very much scientific.

To come up with a figure of 0.15% and have it be accurate, yes, that is impossible. I am not saying you cannot create an economic model, that is easy to do, having it accurately reflect future reality is the hard bit.

[Teebone]

It's just stuff you say during the election.

Oh, thank goodness and here I was thinking that a candidate would actually discuss something meaningful and non-populist for a change. Gotta love that new industry, American Politics!

[Damajin]

Spreading the money around goes a long way to help global stability. It's not all about America though it's nice to see it wont hurt us either. Unless you work in manufacturing which has been a bad place to be for like the last 30 years.

The money isn't going to be spread around, it's going to go from the pocket of a fat cat here in the US to a fat cat in some shithole on the other side of the world which at the end of the day may end up being the exact same fat cat, people act like companies haven't been buying their own supply chain and manufacturing base since like forever now.

[Sunseeker]

We don't have a choice unless we combat currency manipulation which will be a topic when this gets to congress. The chart in the OP is current trends with those changes.

Sure, we can't really play the fair trade game with people who aren't playing it themselves.

[Katie N]

Ouch that hurts. Which district in Ho Chi Minh are you in? I was getting close to 30/2 when I was there a few months ago.

District 7 right now, going to move soon, the speeds are ok inside the country and to neighbour countries but when going to us servers or other servers far away it drops a lot.

[Forogil]

Not a whole lot. $42.7 billion, by 2032 and 128,000 full-time jobs. Is it worth it?

I've heard Vietnam will get a 20% boost to their economy.

Read more at link

http://www.wsj.com/articles/study-pr...omy-1463614427

Why link to a pay-walled secondary source instead of:
https://www.usitc.gov/press_room/new...r0518ll597.htm

By year 15 (2032) for the U.S:
annual real income would be $57.3 billion (0.23 percent) higher than the baseline projections
real GDP would be $42.7 billion (0.15 percent) higher
employment would be 0.07 percent higher (128,000 full-time equivalents).
exports would be $27.2 billion (1.0 percent) higher
imports would be $48.9 billion (1.1 percent) higher
U.S. exports to new FTA partners would grow by $34.6 billion (18.7 percent);
U.S. imports from those countries would grow by $23.4 billion (10.4 percent).

[Masark]

Almost all economists agree that free trade is a good thing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/up...rade.html?_r=0

Great. The TPP (and TTIP) has almost nothing to do with free trade.

[THE Bigzoman]

Not a whole lot. $42.7 billion, by 2032 and 128,000 full-time jobs. Is it worth it?

I've heard Vietnam will get a 20% boost to their economy.

Read more at link

http://www.wsj.com/articles/study-pr...omy-1463614427

President Barack Obama’s signature Pacific trade agreement, which has come under intense fire in the 2016 election, would boost American agriculture and the services sector that dominates the U.S. economy but weigh on manufacturing, a nonpartisan government agency said Wednesday.

If ratified, the 12-nation trade agreement would likely lift U.S. gross domestic product by a small amount—0.15%, or $42.7 billion, by 2032—and increase employment by a net of 128,000 full-time jobs, according to the report from the U.S. International Trade Commission.

Signed in February, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, would lower or eliminate tariffs and drop many other trade barriers between the U.S. and Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Vietnam, Malaysia and five other countries around the Pacific, not including China.

U.S. food and agriculture would get a big boost from the TPP, which would lower barriers to U.S. exports to Japan and other countries. The services sector would get a $42.3 billion lift by 2032, including $11.6 billion for business services and $7.5 billion for retailers and wholesalers. But output in manufacturing would decrease slightly under the TPP, as the trade deal opens some U.S. companies to greater competition.

The U.S. trade balance with TPP countries would improve over 15 years, the ITC says, but the overall U.S. trade deficit is unlikely to change much due to the TPP.



In recent months the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, and the Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton, have rejected the TPP.

Now Congress is unlikely to consider the deal, which requires majority votes in the House and Senate, before the November election.

Mr. Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders, Mrs. Clinton’s Democratic rival, have slammed past trade agreements and blamed U.S. trade policy for the uncertain labor market and stagnant incomes that have hurt many of their supporters.

The WSJ is lying to you.

There's no model or economists that can make accurate predictions on complex international trade deals and their effects. The reason this is even a debate among economists is because we frankly have no idea what will happen.

The disagreement reflects the difficulty of gauging the impact of free-trade agreements. Almost all economists accept the benefits of free trade as laid out in the early 1800s by David Ricardo. Countries do well when they focus on what they are relatively good at producing. But Ricardo looked at only two countries making two products, at a time when few non-tariff barriers such as safety standards existed. This renders his elegant model about as useful for analysing contemporary free-trade deals as a horse and carriage are for predicting the trajectory of an aircraft.


Instead, most economists use what is known as computable general equilibrium (CGE) analysis. CGE models are built on top of a database that seeks to describe economies in full, factoring in incomes, profits and more. Researchers line things up so that the model yields the same output as a real benchmark year. Once that is achieved, they “shock” the model, adjusting trade barriers to see how outcomes shift, both immediately and over time.

There is much to recommend CGE. It is the only trade model broad enough to encompass services, investment and regulations, all of which lie at heart of the TPP debate. It also generates predictions that policymakers want: which sectors will do well and how incomes will change. But CGE has big drawbacks. First, it is dependent on data, which can be very patchy in some areas. Second, faulty assumptions can quickly lead forecasts astray.

http://www.economist.com/cge15