President Obama is in South Korea, on another stop in his four-nation swing through East Asia. He voiced support for the country amid North Korea's threats to detonate another nuclear device.
Share Facebook Twitter GooglePresident Obama is about to leave on a week's visit to 4 Asian countries. It's the latest effort to refocus U.S. foreign policy on Asia. Like earlier efforts, it's struggling to ward off distractions.
Copyright © 2014 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning, I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
President Obama sets off for Asia this week. He'll be visiting four countries - Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines. The trip is part of the president's long-term strategy to refocus America's attention towards Asia, something that's proving a little bit hard to do.
NPR's Scott Horsley joins us now to talk about the trip. Good morning.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Good morning.
MONTAGNE: Now, Scott, the Obama administration promised back in 2011 that this would be - and this was their language - America's Pacific Century. Also that Asia would cease to be an afterthought in U.S. policy. But it seems like every time the president tries to deliver on that promise he runs into roadblocks. What's happening?
HORSLEY: Right. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee put out a report last week that called this attempt at rebalancing toward Asia one of the administration's most farsighted foreign policy initiatives. The idea was that after many years of being bogged down in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. would finally turn its attention to that part of the globe that's home to so much of the world's population, and also so much of the economic vitality.
National Security Adviser Susan Rice said last week that during the next five years, nearly half economic growth outside the United States will take place in Asia. But here's the thing. As Susan Rice was briefing reporters on this trip, she kept getting asked about things like Ukraine. The Middle East continues to hog a lot of U.S. bandwidth. And there are domestic distractions, as well. Last fall, the president was forced to cancel trips to two Asian summits because of the government shutdown.
So there has been some progress. The Foreign Relations Committee notes the Pentagon is on target to base 60 percent of its land and sea assets in the Pacific by 2020. But diplomatic and economic rebalancing has lagged. And the big trade deal that was really the centerpiece of this effort is stalled.
MONTAGNE: And, Scott, that would be the Transpacific Partnership is a big trade deal, giant free-trade deal. Two of the countries Obama is visiting, Japan and Malaysia, would be part of that, right?
HORSLEY: That's right, along with a dozen countries altogether. And this kind of deal the president would really love to finalize on a trip like this. That would be sort of cherry on top. Susan Rice points to forecast of the agreement would boost U.S. exports by more than $120 billion a year. But there seems to be very little prospect of actually getting a deal signed during this trip. After several weeks of what he called difficult negotiations with the Japanese, U.S. Trade Representative Mike Froman said last Friday there are still outstanding issues left to settle.
And maybe a bigger problem for the administration, even if they could get a deal at the bargaining table, it's far from clear that you get it through Congress, where trade pacts face a real skeptical audience especially among the president's fellow Democrats.
MONTAGNE: Well, one interesting thing about this trip, China is not on the president's itinerary. What's going on there?
HORSLEY: China is not on the itinerary but it's casting a big shadow over the visit. It's very much on the president's mind, as well as the mind of the leaders he'll be meeting with. One of the guiding motivations of the rebalancing was for the U.S. to serve as sort of a counterweight to China. But at the same time, the U.S. insists it's not trying to somehow contain China or limit its growth.
This has been especially challenging right now at a time when China and its neighbors have been throwing some sharp elbows at one another over disputed territory in places like the East and South China Sea.
MONTAGNE: And, you know, Scott, it's also a region that has seen its share of tragic news in recent weeks.
HORSLEY: Yes. And that's both a challenge and an opportunity for the president. Susan Rice pointed that when the U.S. offers help, for example, to South Korea after something like the ferry disaster, it's a chance to show that the U.S. will play a role in the region.
By the way, the president is going to be making a stop on his way to Tokyo tomorrow to pay respects to victims of a domestic disaster. He'll be visiting Oso, Washington and will meet with some of the people affected by that terrible mudslide.
MONTAGNE: NPR's Scott Horsley, thanks very much.
HORSLEY: My pleasure.
Copyright © 2014 NPR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to NPR. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio. Share Facebook Twitter GooglePresident Obama visits several Asian countries this week. Guest host Celeste Headlee speaks with business journalists Sudeep Reddy and Roben Farzad about what the trip could mean for the U.S. economy.
Copyright © 2014 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.CELESTE HEADLEE, HOST:
I'm Celeste Headlee and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Michel Martin is away. President Obama heads overseas this week to Asia. He hopes to strengthen U.S. economic ties with that region.
Part of his agenda is a new trade agreement. It's called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and it involves the U.S. and 11 other countries, notably, not China. We're joined now by two experts to tell us what this means for American interests and American workers. Our guests are Sudeep Reddy, economics editor at the Wall Street Journal, and Roben Farzad host of the forthcoming business podcast "Full Disclosure." Welcome, both of you.
SUDEEP REDDY: Hi, Celeste.
ROBEN FARZAD: Thank you.
HEADLEE: Sudeep, first, give us the basics. What are the basics of this particular trade deal?
REDDY: For several years, the Obama administration has been working with these countries that border the Pacific in trying to create greater trade ties. A dozen countries - Australia, Singapore, the United States, Chile, Japan - the goal is to create links between these countries to bring down tariffs, to bring down what it costs to get products into some of these countries and to forge stronger trade ties.
So products are moving back and forth in a freer fashion. And as you noted, one of the big goals in this is to create ties in a place where there is already a big powerhouse. China is the second-largest economy in the world after the United States, and it is showing its might in a lots of ways. And a lot of smaller countries in the - around Asia are concerned about China's strength. And this is one way, by creating economic ties between the United States and some of these countries, to serve as a counterweight to China's big force in that region.
HEADLEE: So, Roben, who are the fors and againsts? Oftentimes, in trade deals, we see big business pitted against workers and labor unions, right? Is that the case in the Trans-Pacific Partnership?
FARZAD: No, in this case, these are really de minimis agreements in the grand scheme of things. As Sudeep said, the big player there is China...
HEADLEE: Did you say de minimist (ph)?
FARZAD: De minimis - I always wanted to use that term on public radio, too. I mean...
HEADLEE: Well, you just did.
FARZAD: Thank you. Thank you for the privilege.
HEADLEE: Bucket list, OK.
FARZAD: Yeah, it's on my bucket list. You're talking about Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and Philippines, and they're by no means monolithic. But again, what is in common here is the way they're looking at China, especially in the lens of what's gone on recently with Russia and the Ukraine. And the U.S. - the White House - is hard-pressed to transmit to effect the fact that it's still strong and important, regionally.
So it's looking around the world and saying, well, we're not being looked at as being very efficacious now in Europe, so let's go to Asia, especially where there's this possibility that China might be emboldened to rough up the likes of South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines, and reassert the fact that we are preeminently important to these countries in terms of the economic ties. So it's a delicate balancing act for our trade representatives and for the White House. At the same time, they kind of thumb our noses at China and reassert our kind of geostrategic and trade importance to these smaller countries.
HEADLEE: Well, you are efficacious at using sophisticated words like de minimis there, Roben.
FARZAD: I'm still - look, I'm still bitter over the SAT verbal. And I remember the six words that I missed. So of course I'm going - I haven't gotten over it.
HEADLEE: He's trying to get them all in in this segment.
FARZAD: Yes.
HEADLEE: So, Sudeep, if I'm an average auto parts manufacturer or line worker, right, do I have something to fear from this Trans-Pacific Partnership? Is it going to cost the United States jobs?
REDDY: We don't even know how this agreement is going to end up, and that's one of the concerns that's coming up among workers, among businesses, among lawmakers in all of this. The goal in this kind of a trade agreement is to create more open trade so that an auto worker here can get his or her parts to be sold all over the world and maybe free that up a little bit. But anyone who has watched the last two decades of global trade since NAFTA in the early 1990s, it's obviously been a big political issue.
But you can see the benefits and the drawbacks of all of these trade agreements. And they are going to be benefits and drawbacks on both of them where, in some cases, you've seen a lot of the benefits accrue to regular people being able to access products that are cheaper, access services that are cheaper. It's a much different world than it was two decades ago in terms of technology and communications.
All of that is changing, and we have a system right now that is stuck in a different era. And that's what people are looking at and wondering if we go forward with this, is it going to be lost to - a loss to me and my company and my neighborhood, or is it going to be some kind of a benefit in ways that I'm not imagining right now?
HEADLEE: If you're just joining us, we're talking about the economic agenda of President Obama's trip to Asia. And our guests are Sudeep Reddy, who you just heard, of the Wall Street Journal and business journalist Roben Farzad. A few Democrats are opposed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, this trade agreement. Take a listen to Rep. Rosa DeLauro last week.
(SOUNDBITE OF INTERVIEW)
REPRESENTATIVE ROSA DELAURO: It threatens to roll back financial regulations, environmental standards and U.S. laws that protect the safety of drugs and food and the toys that we give to our kids.
HEADLEE: Roben, what do we know about things that she just mentioned, whether or not it holds nations that are in this trade agreement to certain economic standards, financial standards, environmental standards?
FARZAD: These are evergreen concerns. You had them with NAFTA. You had them with China over its ascension to the WTO, for example. Colombia's Free Trade Agreement with the United States ran afoul of labor unions here. There are always things that you could bring up. In this case, this is much more to my mind about the signaling of what this sends to China really at the nexus of national security and economic relations than it is about the fine details of, well, what are tariffs X, Y and Z.
I mean, the press really isn't even focusing on that. In each case here, each of these countries - Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines and South Korea - each has a dispute with China over at least one island. And the Chinese Coast Guard recently harassed Filipino ships. And the idea here is that if China is emboldened by the state of affairs from the Kremlin vis-a-vis the Ukraine, that it can get more aggressive with these countries.
And they just want to be assured. It's more about photo op diplomacy and Obama going there and shaking hands, that they have a foil to China, that Washington and Wall Street and the United States has their back if China were to get more aggressive.
REDDY: There are some real concerns here about the underlying provisions, the regulations that lawmakers are talking about. And these come up in...
HEADLEE: Especially considering some of the product problems and recalls that we've had, and safety concerns.
REDDY: Exactly. And you've seen these in markets all over the world. And if these trade deals end up being lowest common denominator approaches, you might end up reducing some of the requirements that you have for American products - that's the fear. The goal of a trade deal is to bring up all these other countries and force them...
HEADLEE: Right.
REDDY: ...To use higher environmental regulations, better labor standards, better product standards...
FARZAD: Sure.
REDDY: ...For food, for prescriptions, for all these things. And that's the goal of the negotiation. But other countries, particularly these countries, aren't there yet in terms of their own markets. And so they don't want to lose out by coming together in this way. And that's the tension you have here.
It's the tension you have in any trade agreement around the world - is who's going to come up and who's going to come down in their standards and in their requirements, and are they going to lose out on some of what they have right now in terms of product services?
FARZAD: I'm just convinced that the ancillary goals here are actually very important, especially in the context of - and I don't want to beat on the Ukraine drum too much - but it's really what everybody is talking about here. And each of these countries has their peculiar concerns, peculiar vested interest with the United States and individual details to hammer out. Japan and South Korea, for example, are not considered emerging markets.
South Korea has ascended - I mean, it's totally turned its act around in the past 17 years. Malaysia and the Philippines are kind of more on the frontier. Malaysia has issues with democracy. There are people here in the United States that are saying we should not legitimize the regime so much by having Obama be the first president in decades to visit over there. So there are all sorts of things...
HEADLEE: Yeah.
FARZAD: ...That are going into this.
HEADLEE: That's Roben Farzad there. Sudeep, you mentioned NAFTA earlier and certainly - that was the trade deal signed under the Clinton administration - and there were many things unintended, unforeseen things, that sort of trickled down from that trade agreement. What do you think we've learned from NAFTA and is any of that going to translate into this trade deal?
REDDY: We've certainly learned that people generally are not in love with trade deals. When you talk to Americans, they understand a lot of the benefits that you get from trade deals because you can see people down the street, you can see your coworkers, you can see your neighbors, people in your communities going and selling their products to other countries and that can be a benefit.
But you also see the famous Ross Perot suck - giant sucking sound, jobs leaving the country. You have to question, though, in this era of technology, a lot of these jobs would have left anyway. There are always opportunities for companies around the world.
HEADLEE: Right, but would we have lost the manufacturing sector to the extent that we did?
REDDY: Would we have lost it at the pace we lost it...
HEADLEE: Yeah.
REDDY: ...And the way we did exactly is the question. But we are always going to be dealing with that, particularly when we're getting better and better products being built and we demand, as consumers, we demand that they're cheaper products whenever possible. And so there's a tension here in what Americans want from their products and what they want in terms of prices and when you go to the store you're typically going for the cheaper priced products.
HEADLEE: Yeah.
REDDY: But you also want the jobs. And the administration - every administration - wants to figure out how to not only preserve jobs, but more importantly, figure out what the next set of jobs will be.
And that's what the goal of these trade agreements really is, is to expand the opportunity for businesses because if you look at figures right now - about 1 percent of American companies actually export anything. And there's a huge gap between what the American economy gets from exports and what our big competitors like China and Germany get from exports.
HEADLEE: So, Roben, NAFTA obviously took a very, very long time to be finalized. What about this particular trade pact? What's the chances it'll actually go through and what's our timeline?
FARZAD: The administration doesn't have many friends who are in control of Congress right now, but it has people who want to be friends with it. You know, friends in need in a moment of potential China being able to puff its chest more. So this could theoretically be fast tracked. Japan and South Korea are most critical here in terms of key exports that come to the United States. If you think about all the products that you have - Samsung TVs, LG phones...
HEADLEE: Right.
REDDY: ...From South Korea - it's really arrived as a major economic powerhouse. So if this is focused - if he could get some unanimity among these very different economies, than it doesn't have to take that long.
But I question this idea that this would really accelerate these countries espousing full democracy through free trade, especially in the case of Malaysia. If you look at China since the WTO in 2001, 2002 it has not been the case.
HEADLEE: OK, that's Roben Farzad. Sorry, I have to leave that debate for another time. He's host of the upcoming business podcast "Full Disclosure," joined us from Richmond, Virginia. And Sudeep Reddy is an economics editor at the Wall Street Journal. He was here with me in our Washington, D.C. studio. Thanks guys.
REDDY: Thanks, Celeste.
FARZAD: Thank you.
Copyright © 2014 NPR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to NPR. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio. Share Facebook Twitter Googlehide captionPresident Obama signs the Fair Sentencing Act in 2010, as Attorney General Eric Holder and a bipartisan group of senators look on.
Pablo Martinez Monsivais/APPresident Obama bid farewell Friday to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, whose lengthy tenure was marred by the botched rollout of the government's health insurance website. Obama wants his budget director, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, to replace Sebelius.
Copyright © 2014 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
And I'm Audie Cornish. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius got a fond farewell today from President Obama. She's resigning after a rocky tenure marred by the botched rollout of the government's health insurance exchange last fall. The president's tapping his budget director, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, to replace Sebelius. NPR's Scott Horsley has more.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Kathleen Sebelius had become a lightning rod for many of the controversies surrounding the Affordable Care Act. But on this day, at least, the storm clouds gave way to a sunny send-off in the White House Rose Garden. President Obama praised the outgoing secretary for years of service that ranged from trying to improve women and children's health to battling an outbreak of H1N1 flu.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Of course, what Kathleen will go down in history for is serving as the Secretary of Health and Human Services when the United States of America finally declared that quality affordable health care is not a privilege, but it is a right for every single citizen of these United States of America.
HORSLEY: That effort was and is controversial, and Sebelius spoke in war-weary terms today about the long-running battle to pass the health care law, defend it in court and finally, promote its protections to a skeptical American public.
SECRETARY KATHLEEN SEBELIUS: We are on the front lines of a long overdue national change, fixing a broken health system. Now, this is the most meaningful work I've ever been a part of. In fact, it's been the cause of my life.
HORSLEY: But it's a cause that's taken a toll on Sebelius and the president.
OBAMA: She's got bumps. I've got bumps, bruises.
HORSLEY: Most bruising of all was the administration's self-inflicted blow of the now-functioning website, which ultimately forced the White House to bring in a team of outside experts.
OBAMA: Yes, we lost the first quarter of open enrollment period with the problems with healthcare.gov, and they were problems. But under Kathleen's leadership, her team at HHS turned the corner, got it fixed, got the job done and the final score speaks for itself.
HORSLEY: Ultimately, more than 7.5 million people were able to sign up for insurance on the government exchange. The president says there's still a lot more work to be done. He's nominating White House budget director Sylvia Mathews Burwell to take over from Sebelius as health secretary.
OBAMA: Sylvia is a proven manager and she knows how to deliver results. And she'll need to be a proven manager because these are tough tasks, big challenges.
HORSLEY: Some Republicans have already praised Burwell who was instrumental in negotiating a two-year budget deal. Arizona Senator John McCain called her an excellent choice. But Republicans also insist they won't drop their opposition to the Affordable Care Act just because Sebelius is stepping down. Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell says Obamacare has to go, too.
Administration officials say they hope to see a smooth transfer of secretaries sometime next month, but little about the health care law has ever gone smoothly, including today's send-off for Sebelius. At one point during the ceremony, the secretary looked down at the binder in front of her and discovered some of her farewell remarks had disappeared.
SEBELIUS: Unfortunately, a page is missing.
HORSLEY: Sebelius had to wing it. She pointed out that earlier this week, the president was at Lyndon Johnson's Library in Texas celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, along with some of Johnson's other domestic achievements.
SEBELIUS: And 50 years ago, my father was part of that historic Congress. He served in the Congress with the passage of Medicare and Medicaid. It seems like a wonderful passing of the baton. And the Affordable Care Act is the most significant social change in this country in that 50 year period of time.
HORSLEY: Both Sebelius and Obama hope one day the Affordable Care Act will be as much a part of the American fabric as Medicare is, and that their tenure, like Johnson's, will look better with age. Scott Horsley, NPR News, the White House.
Copyright © 2014 NPR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to NPR. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio. Share Facebook Twitter Google
