TPP Updates-JV, Varsity, High School

TPP Updates-JV, Varsity, High School

Table of Contents

Table of ContentsIntroduction..............................................................................................................3Key words.................................................................................................................4*** Inherency Updates ***.......................................................................................5*** New Plan ***.......................................................................................................6*** Trade Advantage (1/2) ***..................................................................................7*** Trade Advantage (2/2) ***..................................................................................9*** Economic Collapse impact scenario ***...........................................................11*** They say “too late to reverse trade differences ***.........................................12*** They say “trade blocs don’t compete” ***.......................................................13Neg answers..........................................................................................................14*** 1NC vs Trade Advantage (1/2) ***....................................................................14*** 1NC vs Trade Advantage (2/2) ***....................................................................16*** Extensions to: Trade blocs don’t compete ***..................................................18*** Extensions to: Trade blocs don’t compete ***..................................................19

TPP Updates-JV, Varsity, High School

IntroductionWhat is a trade war?

A trade War is a conflict between two or more nations regarding trade tariffs on each other. This type of conflict usually arises because the nations involved are trying to improve imports or exports for its own country. Trade wars have the potential of increasing the costs of certain imports if the nations involved refuse to make a compromise.

A negative side effect of protectionism that occurs when Country A raises tariffs on Country B's imports is retaliation for Country B raising tariffs on Country A's imports. Trade wars may be instigated when one country per-ceives another country's trading practices to be unfair or when domestic trade unions pressure politicians to make imported goods less attractive to consumers. Trade wars are also a result of a misunderstanding of the wide-spread benefits of free trade.

A trade war that begins in one sector can grow to affect other sectors. Like-wise, a trade war that begins between two countries can affect other coun-tries not initially involved in the trade war. A trade war can be distinguished from other actions that have a detrimental effect on the trading relationship between two countries in that its goals are related specifically to trade (whereas sanctions, for example, also negatively affect free trade, but may have humanitarian or war-related goals).

TPP Updates-JV, Varsity, High School

Key wordsRatify— Sign or give formal consent to (a treaty, contract, or agreement), making it officially valid.

Economic Interdependence— A relationship between two or more people, regions, nations or other entities in which each is dependent on the other for necessary goods or services. Economic interdependence often occurs when all parties are specialized in the fulfillment of some requirements, and must trade with others for unmet requirements.

State Consolidation- Multiple governing entities coming together; unifying.

Hegemonic- the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group.

Duties- a tax on certain items purchased abroad.

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*** Inherency Updates ***Trump’s presidency means no TPP. Japan will not ratify it without the U.S. ratifying TPPThe Hill Times 11/30/16,

“No Pacific trade deal without the U.S., says Japanese envoyChinese-led negotiations may be Canada’s last chance at a regional agreement.”, https://www.hilltimes.com/2016/11/30/no-pacific-trade-deal-without-u-s-says-japanese-envoy/89253

Japan’s ambassador has nixed the possibility of a trans-Pacific trade deal without the United States, scuttling the hopes of members of Canada’s official opposition and others who have called for the remaining members of the TPP to push for a new deal if U.S. president-elect Donald Trump makes good on his promise to pull out of the agreement.“If the United States is out, I think it is very difficult to strike a deal again. Because the whole background conditions are totally different, so what we have negotiated may not apply to areas,” Ambassador Kenjiro Monji told The Hill Times last week.The Trans-Pacific Partnership’s ratification formula effectively requires both Japan and the United States to implement the deal for it to come into effect. Mr. Trump has signaled that won’t happen, and Mr. Monji signaled that Japan has no interest in renegotiating the deal with the remaining 11 members.Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also said last week the TPP would be “ meaningless ” without the U.S.

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*** New Plan ***

Plan: The United States federal government should increase diplomatic and economic engagement with The People’s Republic of China, by ratifying the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal AND invite The People's Republic of China to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership making clear to the Chinese government that they are not excluded, can meet standards, and are encouraged to ap-ply for membership

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*** Trade Advantage (1/2) ***First, Failure of TPP causes China to pursue aggressive regionalization.Mitchell 15

Tom Mitchell, staffwriter @ the Financial Times, 2015 (“China lays out ‘countermeasures’ to offset exclusion from TPP,” Financial Times, October 19th, Available Online at http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/8e81ab8c-763c-11e5-a95a-27d368e1ddf7.html#axzz47uiteo1h)

China has “countermeasures” that it can take to offset the negative economic impact of the country’s exclusion from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, its National Bureau of Statistics said on Monday. Sheng Laiyun, NBS spokesman, waded into a growing debate in Beijing about the costs of being left out of the TPP, the US-led pact also referred to by some as the “anyone but China” deal. The debate began just days after the US reached a TPP agreement with 11 trading partners, when a People’s Bank of China economist estimated that lost trading opportunities could initially knock 0.5 percentage points off the country’s annual economic growth. Mr Sheng said that potential “countermeasures” include bilateral free trade agreements and President Xi Jinping’s effort to construct a “New Silk Road”, officially known as the “One Belt One Road” plan, linking China and Europe. “TPP will have some impact but it won’t be significant in the short-term,” he said. “Bilateral trade agreements, ‘One Belt One Road’ and new free trade zones [in China] could cushion the impact.” However, Mr Sheng said that “we must attach great importance to TPP,” especially as the pact’s 12 potential founding members account for almost 40 per cent of global economic output. “If the TPP agreement is finally implemented, zero tariffs will be imposed on close to 20,000 kinds of products,” he said. “That will create some pressure on our foreign trade.”

Second, exclusion causes deals that hurts the economy & undermines global trade.Economist 15

Global news magazine, 2015 (“Into the home stretch,” Financial Times, July 25th, Available Online at http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21659716-all-its-flaws-biggest-trade-deal-years-good-news-world)

Ultimately, for TPP to really make a mark, it has to be bigger. Leaving out China is an expedient to get the deal done but, if kept that way, it would be a huge gap. China is the world’s biggest manufacturer. Any Asian trade zone without it faces one of two sorry fates. Either, because of China’s centrality

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to Asian supply chains, the deal is so riddled with exemptions that it becomes worthless. Or, if the zone gains traction, the effect is to divert trade away from the most efficient Chinese companies and hurt the global economy. The TPP is likely to face both problems. In textiles, for instance, Vietnamese and Malaysian mills expect to be allowed to continue to source fabric from countries such as China or India that those inside the trade zone cannot produce. This exemption may be vast. Meanwhile, Vietnamese and Malaysian garment makers admit the exclusion of Chinese finished goods will help shelter them from their toughest competition—hardly the ideal of free trade. In other areas, though, TPP could make waves of a good kind. Rules to protect labour rights, strengthen environmental safeguards and limit subsidies to state-owned companies should go further than any previous trade deal. Officials in China, who previously viewed TPP as a gambit to isolate it, now drop hints about wanting to join the club. “It won’t be the gold-standard deal they’ve been talking about, and they will be lucky to get a silver. Perhaps it will be a bronze,” says Jayant Menon of the Asian Development Bank. With other ambitious trade talks gathering dust, however, even a bronze would glitter.

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*** Trade Advantage (2/2) ***Third, TPP without China causes a trade war. Chinese inclusion solves — they’ll accept the invite.Subramanian 14 Dr. Arvind Subramani an, Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development, 2014 (“Trade and Flag: The Changing Balance of Power in the Multilateral Trading System,” IISS Conference, April 6th-8th, Available Online at http://www.iiss.org/-/media/Documents/Events/Geo-economics%20Seminars/Trade%20and%20Flag/Session%20Two%20-%20Arvind%20Subramanian.pdf)

Now, China can respond in a number of ways. It can offset its own disadvantage relative to American competition in Asia-Pacific markets by negotiating free trade agreements of its own with these countries. Indeed, that is what it is doing. China has negotiated agreements with four countries already and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) between ASEAN and six other countries (Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Korea, India and China) is aimed at widening this circle of free trade agreements to parry similar American efforts. But such agreements negotiated by China also impose a cost on American and European firms because in Chinese markets they are now disadvantaged relative to Asian firms. De facto, TPP and TTIP combined with Chinese responses to them amount really to an elaborate trade war by proxy. How will this war end? A lot will depend on China. If it chafes under this strategy of containment, it could prolong the war by targeting the US, for example, by negotiating trade agreements with Korea and Japan that would create even more discrimination against American business. On the other hand, Chinese pragmatism might prevail. Seeking to avoid the impact of TPP and TTIP on its own exports and economic trajectory, China could come to the negotiating table. The early evidence relates to the fact that Japanese entry to the TPP negotiations may have altered China’s approach to the TPP. China quickly recognized the economic losses it would suffer as a result and hence became much more forthcoming about its own market opening. This changed approach is manifest in China’s willingness to negotiate a BIT agreement with the US, seeking to join the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) negotiations in Geneva, adopting a more nuanced approach (and less obstructionist) to the ITA-2 agreement in Geneva, willing to join negotiations on environmental trade, and even desire/willingness to join the TPP itself. Especially if China wants to liberalize for domestic reasons (and there are increasing signs pointing in that direction), China might want to do what Premier Zhu Rongji did in getting China to join the WTO more than a decade ago. By negotiating with its larger trading partners, China could seek to extract concessions for its own liberalization actions that it might want to undertake in any case.

Finally, trade wars escalate to military conflictBrownstein 16

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Barry Brownstein, Pf. Emeritus of Econ @ Baltimore U., 2016 (“Why Do the Candidates Want War with China?,” Foundation for Economic Education, March 30th, Available Online at https://fee.org/articles/why-do-the-candidates-want-war-with-china/)Financial analyst Robert Prechter points out that a common cause underlying wars and bear markets is a negative collective social mood. A negative social mood is based on fear. As fear increases, politicians seek to harness that fear for their personal advantage. They blame other countries for domestic problems. They threaten and then institute trade barriers. As trade barriers increase, the economic situation further deteriorates, both in their own country and around the world, further increasing fear. Eventually, demagogic politicians provoke wars. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, columnist Andrew Browne explained the economic rift growing between the old industrial part of China and its booming coast. China’s economic slow lane is choked with state-owned industrial firms in sectors linked to real estate — steel, cement, coal and construction equipment.… They are zombies in a phantom economy. Zipping along in the economic fast lane are private companies producing goods and services for a burgeoning consumer market that has taken over from manufacturing as the engine of China’s growth. The result of increasing tariffs on Chinese goods will be a declining Chinese economy. Chinese leaders will feel the pressure when “fast-lane” companies can’t absorb displaced workers from the state-owned firms. Increasing fear among Americans has already produced the Trump phenomenon. Imagine what countries with authoritarian traditions will produce if the global economy deteriorates due to trade wars. If trade wars begin, economic tensions will mount. To divert attention from the economy, Chinese politicians could escalate tensions over Taiwan or North Korea. Or, perhaps, they could direct their efforts farther abroad. Will American fears of a cyberattack on our electrical grid prove prophetic? A prosperous world dramatically reduces the odds of such catastrophic events. Economically illiterate politicians who promote trade wars threaten human cooperation, international harmony, and general prosperity. They threaten peace. Good intentions are meaningless if your trade policies lead to war.

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*** Economic Collapse Impact Scenario ***Second, the only scenario for great power war is Asian economic conflict.Zakaria 14

Fareed Zakaria, Peabody award winning journalist, Council on Foreign Relations, (“Time to Put Trade Above Politics,” Time Magazine, March 3rd, http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2166058-1,00.html)

We live in a world without war or even significant conflict among the major powers. We also live in an age of economic growth. All of this seems normal, but in fact, it isn't. The current global system of commerce and collaboration instead of war and competition is historically rare. Will it last? The answer depends largely on Asia, which within 10 years will be home to three of the world's four largest economies. There are two possible scenarios. The first is that Asian countries will embrace the open, rule-based free-trade system in place today and deepen it. The second is that as these countries grow rich, they will become more nationalist, focus on narrow interests, pursue mercantilism and thus erode if not destroy what some in those countries describe as the "Western international order." This is not a theoretical debate; a great game is afoot in Asia. The U.S. wants to strengthen the forces of openness, rules and free trade by concluding an ambitious trade agreement with many Asian countries, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). China, on the other hand, is proposing the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a more mercantilist deal for Asian countries. It asks very little of these countries in terms of commitment to real market-based reforms or to environmental and labor standards. It offers them greater access to China as a gift from Beijing. This might advance China's narrow interests, but it does little for an open, rule-based regional order. Most Asian countries will naturally sign up to expand into the Chinese market. But they are willing to make painful concessions to sign up for America's vision of the region. Japan's Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, told me recently that he was willing to take on some of his country's most protected sectors as part of the TPP. But it's in the U.S. that the American vision has become more cloudy. Congressional Democrats have virtually abandoned free trade, and Republicans balk at supporting President Obama. The economic reason for Washington to support both the TPP and another ambitious trade agreement with European countries, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, is obvious. The U.S. market is already wide open. Last year, 68% of the value of goods entered duty-free. The rest came in at an average tariff of 4.4%. Any agreement will require other countries to make many more concessions than the U.S. simply because their markets remain much more closed. And both trade deals open up markets in other tough areas, like intellectual property, state-owned companies and what are called nontariff barriers

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(regulations that have the effect of protecting inefficient local industries).

TPP Updates-JV, Varsity, High School

*** They Say: “too late to reverse trade differences ***

1. Explain why the plan can reverse trade differences (hint Subramanian evidence).

2. It’s not too late to reverse perceptions of containment and increase trade.Lai 15 — David Lai, Ph.D., Research Professor at the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College, 2015 (“China’s Strategic Moves and Counter-Moves,” Strategic Studies Institute, Winter, Available Online at http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/Parameters/Issues/Winter_2014-15/5_LaiDavid_ ChinasStrategicMovesCounter-Moves.pdf)

China has long held that since it has shown signs of rising, the United States has sought to contain China. Many of the US moves around China, especially the strategic rebalance, have been perceived by the Chinese as attempts to encircle China (by the way, encirclement is a signature feature of Go). Since that is the case, the United States might as well play Go for real and make some well-intended Go moves on China. Moreover, US national leaders have arguably learned much from Sun Tzu’s Art of War and should be able to apply Sun Tzu’s tactics to deal with his Chinese descendants. The US strategic rebalance is likely to continue regardless which party is in charge in Washington. To do it right in what may be called the “US Strategic Rebalance 2.0,” the United States should set the strategic rebalance priority straight—engaging the emerging great powers, especially China (not “including China”), should be at the top of the agenda.39 In addition, the United States should follow the Go strategy to put stones inside China as new efforts to engage China. These future moves will take Black’s moves 11 and 13 in Figure 1 as stepping stones. In Go terms, those future (United States) moves will reduce the size of White's (China’s) posturing. In geostrategic terms, those moves will be enhanced by US efforts to shape China’s rise. At this time, China is still open to US engagement and persuasion. Washington should seize the opportunity to engage Beijing before that window of opportunity slips away. Whether China and the United States play chess or Go in the Asia-Pacific is not a trivial matter. Chess is a force-on-force game that relies heavily on maneuver of pieces with different values and capabilities. Moreover, chess is a zero-sum game in that there is usually only one winner (as shown in Figure 3), though it sometimes ends in a draw. The implication of this aspect is very problematic in the context of US-China relations. If guided by the mindset of chess, China and the United States would seek a clear victory over the other. The price would be unattainable and unbearable.

TPP Updates-JV, Varsity, High School

*** They Say:“trade blocs don’t compete” ***1. Explain what the difference is between their card (the nega-tive) and the card read in the 1AC.

2. TPP exclusion spurs Chinese regionalism over manufacturing — that trades off with free trade.Jee 15 Jee Man-Soo, a research fellow of the Korea Institute of Finance, 2015 (“TPP will spur erosion of China’s manufacturing edge,” Korea Herald, December 24th, Available Online at http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20151224001190)

In the past when China pursued growth based on exports, it purchased raw materials or components from countries in East Asia and used its cheap labor to produce finished products. China then sold them to advanced nations. But its per capita income has risen to $8,000. Particularly, the income in China’s eastern coastal regions -- its manufacturing hub -- is much higher than the average as the regions have become more affluent than their counterparts. Thus, China’s advantage in the labor-intensive industries has been weakening. This trend is in sync with the TPP. Countries like Malaysia and Vietnam that joined the TPP could emerge as the center of manufacturing. Within the TPP framework, there are manufacturing hubs like these countries, and there are also countries like Japan that can invest in these hubs and provide components. Also in the TPP, there is a huge U.S. market. This said, the TPP platform offers good conditions for countries like Malaysia to emerge as a new manufacturing center. To sum up, the TPP would accelerate the movement of the manufacturing center from China to other countries, and it would encourage the growth of Southeast Asian nations. China is not thinking of avoiding this trend, as it can’t stop the labor-intensive industries from moving out of the country. What China wants to see is that the movement of the manufacturing hub to Southeast Asia is carried out not under the TPP framework, but under its own leadership. So the possibility is high that China, Japan and South Korea would be competing intensely over the establishment of the manufacturing center in Southeast Asia. The push for the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) can also be seen as strategic moves made with the looming competition in mind.

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TPP Updates-JV, Varsity, High School

Negative Answers*** 1NC vs Trade Advantage (1/2) ***

1. It’s too late to reverse trade differences Zhou 15 (Steve, journalist based in Toronto. He is a regular contributor to The American Conservative, Muftah and Ricochet media, among other outlets. He is also a columnist and an associate editor at The Islamic Monthly, 11/6, “The TPP risks making US-China relations worse,” http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/11/the-tpp-risks-making-us-china-relations-worse.html)The saddest aspect of the widening U.S.-China gap is that the TPP’s specific clauses aren’t necessarily aimed at antagonizing or containing China. The country remains one of America’s biggest trading partners and is the biggest trading partner of Vietnam, Japan, New Zealand and Australia, all signatories of the TPP. It would have benefited the U.S. and China if the two countries could have come together to write the international rules on trade. That ship has likely sailed, unless China’s recent economic struggles can direct its leadership to join the TPP or at least form a strategic partnership with the bloc. Each participating country has to ratify the TPP agreement, and the accord faces serious opposition in the U.S. from both Democrats and Republicans, for different reasons. Some Democrats have questioned whether the deal is good for U.S. labor, while senior Republicans have voiced their disagreement over rules affecting the pharmaceutical industry. The U.S. debate takes place against the backdrop of a presidential campaign, and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton has begun to change her tune on the TPP in a bid for the support of organized labor, despite advocating for it as Obama’s secretary of state. It has likely become too late to change China’s fundamental orientation in the region. Beijing is now trying to push through its own multilateral trade agreement, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. This proposal is widely seen as China’s version of the TPP and involves 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Like the TPP, it will affect about 40 percent of the global economy. If the U.S. and China continue to use trade as a weapon against each other’s influence, both countries will suffer, along with the rest of Asia – and the world.

2. Trade blocs don’t competeDollar 15 (David, Sr Fellow @ Brookings Inst., “China's rise as a regional and global power: The AIIB and the 'one belt, one road',” http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2015/07/china-regional-global-power-dollar)

China’s initiatives in Asia are seen in many quarters as a setback for the United States. The U.S. government contributed to this narrative through its efforts to discourage allies from joining the new AIIB. In the end, major American allies, such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and South Korea, did join the Chinese initiative, and Japan is seriously considering becoming a member. However, this is likely to be a temporary diplomatic setback for the United States. America’s own main economic initiative in the Asia-Pacific —

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namely the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) — now seems likely to be completed by the end of 2015. Many major economies in Asia, such as Australia, Singapore, South Korea, and Vietnam want to be part of both Chinese initiatives (the AIIB and the ‘One Belt, One Road’) and the American effort to reduce trade barriers. I argue in this essay’s third section that these different efforts are in fact complementary. The kind of infrastructure financed by the Chinese initiatives is the “hardware” of trade and investment, necessary but not sufficient to deepen integration. TPP, on the other hand, represents the “software“ of integration, reducing trade barriers, opening up services for trade and investment, and harmonizing various regulatory barriers to trade. There is a risk that the competing initiatives of China and the United States will lead to regional blocs and a disintegration of trade, but it is more likely that Sino-American competition will lead to strengthened institutions and deeper integration throughout Asia-Pacific.

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*** 1NC vs Trade Advantage (2/2) ***No impact to tradeMiller 14 (Charles Miller, lecturer at ANU’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, “Globalisation and war,” April 2014) http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/globalisation-and-war/)John O’Neal and Bruce Russett’s work is perhaps the best known in this regard—and Steven Pinker cites them approvingly in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature. Analysing trade and conflict data from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries, they found that trade flows do have a significant impact in reducing the chances of conflict, even when taking a variety of other factors into account. But their conclusions have in turn been questioned by other scholars. For one thing, their model failed to take three things into account. First, it’s quite possible that peace causes trade rather than the other way around—no company wants to start an export business to another country if it anticipates that business linkages will be cut off by war further down the line. Second, conflict behaviour exhibits what’s called ‘network effects’— if France and Germany are at peace, chances are Belgium and Germany will be too. And third, both the likelihood of conflict and the level of trade are influenced by the number of years a pair of countries has already been at peace—because prolonged periods of peace increase mutual trust. Take any of these factors into account, and studies have shown (here and here) that the apparent relationship between trade flows and peace disappears. Perhaps, though, conceiving of globalisation solely in terms of trade flows is mistaken. Alternative indicators of globalisation include foreign direct investment, financial openness and the levels of government intervention in economic relations with the rest of the world. Data on those variables is less extensive than on trade flows, usually dating back only to the post World War II period. But some analysts, such as Patrick McDonald and Erik Gartzke, have argued that a significant correlation can be found between them and a reduction in the probability of conflict. Those findings, newer than O’Neal and Russett’s, haven’t yet been subjected to the same intense scrutiny, so may in turn be qualified by future research. What does all that mean for the policy-maker? The statistical evidence certainly doesn’t tell us that globalisation has made war in East Asia impossible. ‘Cromwell’s law’ counsels us that a logically conceivable event should never be assigned a probability of zero. The most we could conclude is that globalisation has made such an occurrence much less likely. There’s some hopeful numerical evidence that globalisation does indeed have that effect, but the evidence isn’t so compelling that we can substitute an economic engagement policy for a security policy. By all means, let’s continue to promote trade in the Asia-Pacific. But we should also continue to be prepared for scenarios which are unlikely but would be hugely damaging if they were to occur.

China doesn’t care if it’s excluded from TPP; doesn’t promote material reaction from ChinaYu 15 (Peter, professor of law and co-director of the Center for Law and Intellectual Property at Texas A&M University, 10/19, “How China's exclusion from the TPP could hurt its economic growth,” http://fortune.com/2015/10/19/china-exclusion-tpp-economic-growth/)

Nevertheless, four reasons exist to explain why China may not care much about its being left out of the TPP. First, China continues to actively engage its neighbors and

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trading partners. Indeed, many Asian countries – including those involved in the TPP negotiations – fear that they will have to pick between China and the U.S. As policymakers from Australia and New Zealand have reportedly told their U.S. counterparts in the early stages of the negotiations, their countries would withdraw if the TPP were designed to contain China. Without containment, however, countries can still negotiate other bilateral or regional trade agreements with China. Second, that the U.S. and other like-minded countries have gone outside the World Trade Organization (WTO) and other multilateral fora to negotiate new rules has set an important precedent for China to undertake similar maneuvers. From China’s perspective, such maneuvers could come in handy when the country needs to avoid multilateral intervention in sensitive matters such as those involving Taiwan, Tibet and the South China Sea. Third, China continues to face myriad challenges within its own economy, which include massive urban migration, widespread unemployment and an enormous gap between the rich and the poor. Although China has worked hard in the past two decades to ensure compliance with WTO rules, the country may not be ready for new and higher trade standards. These standards can be particularly burdensome in view of the recent downturn of the Chinese economy. Finally, China is unlikely to be able to join the TPP unless some of its standards are substantially revised. For example, the agreement’s government procurement standards would drastically alter the structure and operation of Chinese state-owned enterprises. The TPP electronic commerce standards could also deeply affect the country’s censorship and information control policy.

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*** Extensions to: Trade blocs don’t compete ***

( ) No competition between blocsLee 15 (Malcolm, fellow @ Brookings Inst., 8/18, “The 2015 U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue in review: An interview with Malcolm R. Lee,” http://www.brookings.edu/research/interviews/2015/08/18-2015-us-china-strategic-economic-dialogue-review)

There is no question that China is exercising influence that reflects its new weight. But I do not see U.S.-China competition as a zero-sum game that will produce separate economic blocs. First, the TPP is the economic centerpiece of President Obama’s rebalance to Asia. If done right, it will contain stronger trade rules necessary to help level the playing field for U.S. companies, farmers, and workers. The U.S. market is already wide open, whereas the markets of many Asian trading partners are not. Many of the TPP provisions address the kind of barriers that U.S. companies face not only in member countries but also in China. While China is not participating in the TPP negotiation, it could one day join the partnership. Second, experts like David Dollar, my colleague at the Brookings Institution, make good arguments that the TPP and AIIB can be complementary. The TPP will help establish the next generation of rules of commerce, or the “software” for deeper economic integration and fair competition. The AIIB, working as a complement to the U.S.-led World Bank and Japan-led Asian Development Bank, can help finance the “hardware,” or infrastructure, in Asia’s emerging economies. Third, the economies of the Pacific region, including most notably the United States and China, are deeply interdependent as trading partners. Together, the two countries constitute a third of global GDP and nearly 40% of recent global growth. They are invested in each other’s economic success. Many Pacific nations want and need both the United States and China and do not want to have to choose between the two.

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*** Extensions to: Trade blocs don’t compete ***

( ) China doesn’t care if it’s excluded from TPP, won’t start a trade warYu 15 (Peter, professor of law and co-director of the Center for Law and Intellectual Property at Texas A&M University, 10/19, “How China's exclusion from the TPP could hurt its economic growth,” http://fortune.com/2015/10/19/china-exclusion-tpp-economic-growth/)

Nevertheless, four reasons exist to explain why China may not care much about its being left out of the TPP. First, China continues to actively engage its neighbors and trading partners. Indeed, many Asian countries – including those involved in the TPP negotiations – fear that they will have to pick between China and the U.S. As policymakers from Australia and New Zealand have reportedly told their U.S. counterparts in the early stages of the negotiations, their countries would withdraw if the TPP were designed to contain China. Without containment, however, countries can still negotiate other bilateral or regional trade agreements with China. Second, that the U.S. and other like-minded countries have gone outside the World Trade Organization (WTO) and other multilateral fora to negotiate new rules has set an important precedent for China to undertake similar maneuvers. From China’s perspective, such maneuvers could come in handy when the country needs to avoid multilateral intervention in sensitive matters such as those involving Taiwan, Tibet and the South China Sea. Third, China continues to face myriad challenges within its own economy, which include massive urban migration, widespread unemployment and an enormous gap between the rich and the poor. Although China has worked hard in the past two decades to ensure compliance with WTO rules, the country may not be ready for new and higher trade standards. These standards can be particularly burdensome in view of the recent downturn of the Chinese economy. Finally, China is unlikely to be able to join the TPP unless some of its standards are substantially revised. For example, the agreement’s government procurement standards would drastically alter the structure and operation of Chinese state-owned enterprises. The TPP electronic commerce standards could also deeply affect the country’s censorship and information control policy.