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Asia Minute: Trade on Agenda for Singapore Leader’s Washington Visit

Wikipedia Commons
Wikipedia Commons

The Prime Minister of Singapore is spending most of this week in Washington. It’s the first official state visit by a Singaporean leader in more than 30 years. And discussions will include at least one topic that came under fire at the political conventions of both republicans and democrats. HPR’s Bill Dorman explains in today’s Asia Minute.

For the last couple of weeks, the Trans Pacific Partnership has served as a rare case of bi-partisan agreement—on some convention nights it seemed like everyone hated it.  The reality is a bit more complicated—but the politics of trade are likely to be a topic of discussion in Washington this week.

The TPP involves a dozen countries—including the US and Singapore.  It was signed in February, but still needs to be approved by Congress—and that could be a major challenge this election year.  President Obama remains a strong backer of the TPP—and he’ll probably use the state visit of Singapore’s leader to make the case for it.  Diplomatic and military cooperation will also be themes of this six-day event…but trade is likely to feature prominently.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong is the first Singaporean leader to come for an official visit since 1985... when his father Lee Kuan Yew told a joint session of Congress that protectionist legislation and a failure of free trade policies “could set off a chain reaction which would result in a downward spiral of the world economy.”  That year the U.S. trade deficit hit what was then a record—nearly $150 billion.  Last year, that trade deficit was more than triple that total---topping $540 billion.

Bill Dorman has been the news director at Hawaiʻi Public Radio since 2011.
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