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President pulls support of trade pact for 2nd time

WASHINGTON — After publicly flirting last week with having the United States rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership, President Donald Trump appeared to rebuff the idea once and for all late Tuesday.

The decision put an apparent end to a meandering trade policy in which Trump pulled out of the deal in his first week in office, before suggesting last week that he was having second thoughts.

“Too many contingencies and no way to get out if it doesn’t work,” Trump wrote from his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. “Bilateral deals are far more efficient, profitable and better for OUR workers.”

The comments confounded some trade experts because South Korea is not in the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

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The declaration comes as Trump has been in discussions with South Korea about peace talks with North Korea and as the president hosts Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan at Mar-a-Lago, where they are expected to discuss trade, among other issues.

When Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership last year, he proposed a bilateral trade deal with Japan in its place. But Japan’s deputy prime minister, Taro Aso, ruled out that possibility in March, saying that such a negotiation would lead to unnecessary pain for Japan.

Instead, Japan forged ahead with a deal among the accord’s 11 remaining members, which they reached last month. Japan maintains that this agreement is still fragile and that negotiating another pact with the United States could put its success at risk.

Japan has said it would be willing to enter a one-on-one deal only if it would serve as a bridge to the United States’ re-entering the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Other countries have also been cool to the idea of giving any ground to the U.S. after they spent months reworking the deal after Trump withdrew.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

ALAN RAPPEPORT © 2018 The New York Times

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