Spotlight: Trump's election win delivers major blow to Obama's legacy on trade

Donald Trump's surprise victory in U.S. presidential election on Tuesday delivered a major blow to President Barack Obama's legacy on trade, as any hope of enacting his signature Pacific trade deal quickly faded after the election.

The Obama administration had lobbied hard for months in the hope of approving the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal during the so-called lame-duck session of Congress after the election, if Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had won.

However, fueled by a wave of anti-trade and anti-establishment sentiment, Republican presidential candidate Trump was elected to the White House, shocking many throughout the country.

Republican congressional leaders made clear after the election that they wouldn't consider the 12-nation Pacific trade deal in the remainder of Obama's term, citing the president-elect's opposition to the deal.

"(TPP) is certainly not gonna be brought up this year," U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters on Wednesday. "It would be up to discussions with the new president."

Trump had broken from the longstanding Republican orthodoxy in favor of free trade and embraced a protectionist trade stance throughout his presidential campaign, trying to appeal to angry and frustrated blue-collar voters who have seen manufacturing jobs loss in an increasing global economy.

Trump had vowed to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and pull the United States out of the TPP, which he said would "destroy" U.S. manufacturing, as part of an effort to restore American jobs.

While White House officials still believe the TPP makes sense for America for economic and national security reasons, they have acknowledged the difficulty of pressing Congress to pass the TPP after the election.

"In terms of the TPP agreement itself, leader McConnell has spoken to that and it's something that he's going to work with the President-elect to figure out where they go in terms of trade agreements in the future," Adewale Wally Adeyemo, U.S. deputy national security adviser for international economics, told reporters in a conference call on Friday.

Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, said in the same conference call that uncertainty about the TPP's fate is also high on the agenda when Obama attends the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders' summit in Peru next week.

"I would expect that the President will have an opportunity to meet with the TPP leaders as a group while he is in Peru," he said.

"Obviously we recognize the recent political developments in our country and how that affects TPP, but that's all the more reason for the President to discuss with other TPP leaders the work they've done together and how we're looking at issues related to trade going forward," Rhodes noted.

Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong had warned that the U.S. could lose its reputation and harm the relations with its allies in Asia if the country failed to ratify the TPP trade deal.

"I think in terms of America's engagement of the region, you have put your reputation on the line. It is the big thing which America is doing in the Asia-Pacific with the Obama administration consistently over many, many years of hard work and pushing," Lee said in August while visiting Washington.

"If at the end, waiting at the altar the bride doesn't arrive, I think there are people who are going to be very hurt. Not just emotionally, but really damaged for a long time to come," he said.

The TPP deal involves Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam. It was formally signed by ministers from these 12 countries in February after more than five years' negotiation.

The TPP now undergoes a two-year ratification period in which at least six countries, which account for 85 percent of the combined gross domestic production of the 12 TPP countries, must approve the final text for the deal to be implemented.

"The simplified version of the rules is, if either the U.S. or Japan fails to ratify, the agreement as written will not enter into force," said Scott Miller, a trade expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

But that does not mean the remaining 11 TPP participating countries could not revise that condition and implement the deal if the U.S. fails to ratify, according to Miller.

"That would actually take a separate step. It would require the parties other than the United States getting together and deciding that this is sufficient interest to their economies that they want to move forward and essentially renegotiate that section of the agreement," he said.

Trump's election win could also further delay a landmark U.S.-EU free trade deal that the Obama administration has been negotiating with the European Union for three years, according to a top EU trade official.

"For quite some time TTIP will be in the freezer. What happens when it's defrosted, I think we'll have to wait and see," EU's Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said of negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) Friday at a press conference.

"We will be ready to resume negotiations when the new U.S. administration feels that they are ready, but the ball is in their court," she said.

Negotiators from the U.S. and EU had hoped to finalize a trade pact by the end of 2016, but the lack of political support on both sides and the rise of anti-globalization sentiment made them difficult to overcome politically sensitive issues in the talks.

It's unclear whether a Trump presidency will resume negotiations on the TPP and TTIP or it will throw away these two ambitious trade deals. Trump had said that he would prefer to negotiate deals one-on-one with countries rather than enter into multinational trade agreements. Endit