Trump’s TPP pullout could hurt workers more than it helps

When he signed the executive order formally scrapping a trade deal with 11 Pacific Rim countries, President Donald Trump proclaimed the move a “great thing for the American worker.”

But a chorus of trade experts and economists this week have argued that the pulling out of the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership will have exactly the opposite impact.

“Virtually all economic analyses of the proposed TPP … provided empirical arguments that the TPP would raise U.S. workers’ income, both for highly educated and less educated workers,” according to Jeffrey Bergstrand, finance professor at the University of Notre Dame and a former Federal Reserve economist.

Even TPP’s most ardent supporters concede that it had flaws; some, for example, argued that it didn’t go far enough in protecting intellectual property of U.S. companies, protecting worker rights or cutting red tape that restricts American-made products.

But scrapping the deal outright will leave American workers worse off, according to trade experts like Bergstrand.

Read the entire story on the CNBC website.