Adjunct Professor Matt Gold was quoted in a New American article about NAFTA renegotiation under the Trump administration.
The night the text of USMCA was released on the USTR website, Heyman reviewed various portions and chapters of the agreement, only to discover that they were identical to those in the TPP. Ironically, Trump has repeatedly lambasted the TPP as the worst trade deal ever negotiated. “[From] some of the reads I got over night, two-thirds of this agreement is essentially going back to TPP,” Heyman explained. “All they did was take so much of the language of TPP and implement it here, as it pertains to Canada.”
Speaking on the same program, Fordham Law Professor Matthew Gold elaborated how Trump’s “big win” in regard to the USMCA/NAFTA renegotiations with Canada comes directly from the TPP. “He got a large number of small updates most of which were in the TPP agreement, which he pulled out of. He got us back to a small increased access in the Canadian dairy market, almost all of which was in the TPP,” Gold said.
The TPP was rejected because the ends didn’t justify the means; in the case of the USMCA, they are being celebrated.
And Gold should know the details of the TPP. He served in the Obama administration as a leading figure on North American affairs and was involved in the TPP negotiations, according to his bio:
Professor Gold previously held an appointment within the Executive Office of the President as the Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for North America, in which he was the United States’ lead negotiator and policy advisor focused on North American trade. In that capacity, he was a trade advisor to the President for the North American Leaders Summit, and … was a participant in the talks that brought Canada and Mexico into the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations.