SYDNEY (AP) – President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, as promised, is prompting other member countries to seek ways to salvage the trade pact.
Leaders of some of the 11 other nations involved in the initiative said they hope to push ahead with the agreement in some form, with or without the U.S.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Tuesday he had discussed the pact’s future recently with the prime ministers of Japan, Singapore and New Zealand, all TPP members, and believed the pact could survive without the U.S.
“Losing the United States from the TPP is a big loss, there is no question about that,” Turnbull told reporters. “But we are not about to walk away from our commitment to Australian jobs.”
Trump says he favors one-on-one agreements with other nations rather than multinational pacts like the TPP, which would have included markets comprising 40 percent of world GDP and was eventually meant to be the foundation for a wider pan-Pacific trading bloc.