10 Reasons why the Transatlantic and Trans-Pacific Partnerships are Good for America
10. TPP Will Increase Prosperity for All Americans
The first three decades after World War II represented a kind of golden age of income equality in the United States. But it resulted in a stagnating economy and falling productivity and labor quality. The post-war income equality was there largely because of America’s insulation from imports. It was an artificial equality that was bound to change once Germany and Japan recovered, Mexico modernized, and China emerged from Maoist isolation. The rise of the Asia-Pacific has been a hugely positive development, both for those countries and for the United States. The economies have grown at an unprecedented speed. Infrastructure has been developed where there was none. Hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty. This country has been made more productive by broader international competition and more secure by broader international prosperity.
Buoyed by cheap domestic energy supplies and the perspective of the open markets with Europe and East Asia, US-based firms and their workers are now poised to prosper anew by meeting the needs of a burgeoning global middle class. If we miss that opportunity, the country will stagnate and lose its global influence, and the Americans of all income strata will regret it.
