It was one of President Trump’s very first acts: to pull out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a sweeping 12-nation trade agreement that had been the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s strategic “rebalance” toward Asia.
Trump had charged that such deals hurt American manufacturing, and on Jan. 23, 2017, he signed the withdrawal order in the Oval Office.
“A great thing for the American worker, what we just did,” Trump said.
With that, he set in motion a political and economic storm that is still reverberating here in Vietnam.
