BDN interviews Trostel about trade pact’s potential economic impact on Maine
The Bangor Daily News reported the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed trade pact between the U.S. and 11 Pacific Rim nations that would create the world’s largest free-trade zone, would have a small but mostly beneficial impact on Maine. According to a draft analysis from the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine, the state stands to see modest gains from increased trade around the Pacific Rim by 2032, the article states. “The effects on Maine and the United States are going to be relatively small. There will be some losses hastened by the TPP … but those losses will be very heavily concentrated,” said Philip Trostel, an economics professor at UMaine and one of the study’s lead authors. Under the trade pact, which will cover 40 percent of the global economy, Mainers will see slight income gains, allowing them to buy more while boosting exports of valuable Maine products, especially lobster, the BDN reported. “Most Maine employers aren’t going to be affected by the TPP, although some firms will see increased trade opportunities and expand,” Trostel said. Foreign trade contributed to only 27 percent of mass layoffs in Maine between 1996 and 2012, the analysis found. While imports contributed to job losses in Maine, other factors such as technological advances likely played a bigger role, and those are changes that would have happened even without free trade, according to Trostel. “What international trade does is speeds up the process of job creation and destruction. But these changes are going to happen whether or not the TPP gets passed,” he said. “It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.”