Thread: TPP Reid Says "hell no"

Obama facing Dem revolt on trade push, Reid says ‘hell no’

Published April 22, 2015FoxNews.com


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Now Playing Democrats divided over multi-nation trade deal




President Obama is facing a Democratic revolt over ambitious trade initiatives that are dividing the party, leading to tensions with everyone from Senate party leader Harry Reid to liberal icon Elizabeth Warren.


The disagreements erupted on Wednesday as leaders of the Senate Finance Committee tried to proceed with a vote on trade legislation, but liberal opposition quickly delayed the process.


Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a fierce opponent of the trade push, invoked a Senate scheduling rule to sideline the committee's actions for hours. "This job-killing trade deal has been negotiated in secret," said Sanders, who made a lengthy Senate speech denouncing the legislation.


Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, vowed the committee would finish the bill Wednesday. "I don't care how much time it takes," he said.


The flare-up was just one of many in the Democratic ranks. In a blunt challenge to the president, Reid told reporters earlier this week: "I'm not only no, I'm hell no" on Obama's proposal.
More on this...

• Trade becomes a wedge issue among Democrats
  
  

At issue is a push for legislation that would ease the way for sweeping trade deals. Obama wants "fast-track" powers to help move free-trade proposals such as the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership. The legislation before the committee specifically would renew presidential authority to present trade deals that Congress can endorse or reject, but not amend.


This, in turn, would make it easier to approve deals like the controversial TPP.


But that authority, and those proposals, face resistance from labor unions and liberal groups who say free-trade pacts hurts U.S. jobs. Hillary Clinton, too, has been left in an awkward position as she seeks the Democratic nomination for president, and is publicly holding back support amid pressure from the left.


The push-back now has Obama on defense, as he tries to muster a bipartisan coalition.


"I would not be doing this trade deal if I did not think it was good for the middle class," Obama said in an interview Tuesday with MSNBC. "When you hear folks make a lot of suggestions about how bad this trade deal is, when you dig into the facts, they are wrong."


In the interview, Obama specifically called out deal critic Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democratic senator and hero of liberal groups.


"I love Elizabeth. We're allies on a whole host of issues. But she's wrong on this," Obama said.
Few issues divide Democrats more than trade. Obama, like former President Bill Clinton, supports free trade, but many Democratic lawmakers do not.


Clinton's and Obama's stands -- and liberal groups' opposition -- pose a dilemma for Hillary Clinton, the former first lady now seeking the presidency herself. Campaigning Tuesday in New Hampshire, she declined to say whether she supports the Pacific-rim proposal.


"We need to build things, too," Clinton said, taking a pro-manufacturing stance generally embraced by both parties. "We have to do our part in making sure we have the capabilities and skills to be competitive," she said, while getting back to "a much more focused effort, in my opinion, to try to produce those capacities here at home."


This week, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, called the trade deal "fragile," noting that Democratic support is necessary. Republican sources say Obama needs to impress his desire for this trade pact on his Democratic allies.
Amid the divisions in Democratic ranks, Fox News has learned there is an effort afoot among congressional Democrats to court just enough from their side not to embarrass the president.


But Senate Finance Committee member Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., says the administration must press China to stop manipulating its currency, even though China isn't a party to the Pacific-rim negotiations. "I'm disappointed in the efforts by President Obama," Schumer said at a committee hearing Tuesday.


If a nation keeps its currency value artificially low, it can boost exports by making local products more affordable to foreigners. Economists disagree on whether China still engages in the practice, and the Obama administration says it addresses currency manipulation in the fast-track bill.


Republicans generally support trade pacts. But Obama can't count on them alone to push the fiercely debated bills through the GOP-controlled House and Senate.


Most or all Finance Committee Republicans support fast track. Democratic supporters include Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon, Maria Cantwell of Washington, Tom Carper of Delaware and Mark Warner of Virginia.


Committee passage would move the bill to the full Senate. The House has yet to vote on fast track this year.
Fox News' Chad Pergram and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015...-says-hell-no/

We find occasional friends in the unlikeliest of places.

You actually got this one right, Harry.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, vowed the committee would finish the bill Wednesday. "I don't care how much time it takes," he said.

Whew. Orrin, what has happened to you? Where is the man who stood up so eloquently for Clarence Thomas? Where is the man we thought you were?

We do not want, do not need, and will not tolerate more free trade treason by Obama or by Republicans. Free trade isn't free, it's cost us our manufacturing base, it's cost 20 million American workers their good jobs, it's cost US taxpayers billions in lost revenue, it's cost tens of millions of Americans their self-reliance, sustainability, and independence by forcing them out of good jobs into no jobs or jobs that can't sustain them and their families, it's put thousands of businesses out of business who used to service our manufacturing base, it's stolen trillions of our money supply in outrageous trade deficits, it's grown poverty, immigration, welfare, Medicaid and government spending we can't afford which has forced our national debt to unprecedented levels so high we can never repay them.

What is wrong with you? Are you insane? Have you lost your once good wits? Are you a McCain, an aging old fart in the Senate who has long out-stayed his usefulness?

What a tragedy that I have to agree with Democrats on a "trade pact" as treasonous as all the others, and oppose Republicans in Congress who want to sell-out the United States and bankrupt our citizens by giving away our domestic trade, commerce that our Congress was created to protect.

Is giving away someone else's livelihood a Mormon thing? Because it sure as hell isn't a Republican thing. Republicans have always been trade protectors and it's damn time we made sure that's who we elect to the US Congress in the future.

Obama and Republicans Agree on the Trans-Pacific Partnership … Unfortunately

APRIL 22, 2015

Mark Bittman

There’s an important issue out there you may never have heard of, which is just what its proponents would like. That’s the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), currently being pushed by the Obama administration and its corporate (and mostly Republican!) allies. It’s a blatant attack on labor, farmers, food safety, public health and even national sovereignty.

And the details of the deal are largely secret. Other than what’s been leaked, the public has no access to its contents, and even members of Congress don’t know much. (On the other hand, “cleared advisers,” mostly corporate lawyers, have full access.)

That’s because the TPP is way too important to its sponsors to allow little details like congressional or public input to get in its way, even though constitutional authority over trade is granted to the legislative, not the executive, branch.


This is a bipartisan effort if ever there was one; George Will has called the TPP “Obama’s best idea.” Thus we see the administration, along with pro-business Democrats and Republicans, trying to bulletproof the deal. Last week, a bill was introduced that would give the president “fast-track authority” on the TPP. If that passes, Congress could vote only up or down on the deal, not amend it. That’s quite a bit of presidential power for a scheme that would have a striking impact on the global economy — and the food on our table.

The TPP is little more than enhanced corporation power branded as free trade. It gives corporations the right to challenge government regulations and seek compensation if they think they’ve been treated unfairly by any of the 12 Pacific Rim nations in the deal. (China is currently, but not necessarily permanently, excluded; part of the thinking behind the TPP is to lock up an agreement with these partners before China does.)

Even if you look “only” at food and the environment, the TPP should be ripped apart and put back together with public and congressional input. The pact would threaten local food, diminish labeling laws, likely keep environmentally destructive industrial meat production high (despite the fact that as a nation we’re eating less meat) and probably maintain high yields of commodity crops while causing price cuts.

It would certainly weaken food safety. For example, more than 90 percent of our seafood is imported, a figure that includes fish that were caught domestically and sent overseas for processing before coming back in, which makes the inspection process even more complicated. All told, that’s more than five billion pounds of imports annually, and according to the Center for Food Safety, just 90 federal inspectors guarantee its safety. (The Food and Drug Administration inspects less than 2 percent of imported seafood.) By reducing restrictions on Southeast Asian imports, the TPP would allow more fish containing chemicals that are illegal in domestic aquaculture to reach our shores; by making inspections less effective, it would virtually guarantee that those chemicals make it to our tables.

The agreement would even allow countries to challenge one another’s laws, so that “equivalency” may simply mean that the least powerful regulations become the norm. The United States would have no special standing: If our laws are seen as restraining trade or limiting profits, they could be challenged in special courts, per the TPP’s “investor state” clause.Philip Morris is suing Uruguay over that country’s anti-smoking laws under just such circumstances; there are several examples of American companies’ flouting local laws and citing trade agreements as an excuse; and Mexico has been sued repeatedly for theoretically diminishing investor profits.

When individual governments have little say, corporate “efficiency” amounts to the global economy’s being run as an ill-regulated business model (an equally egregious trans-Atlantic agreement is currently being negotiated). The projected benefits to the public – as usual, “job creation” leads the list — are mythical, and you don’t have to take my word for it.

Historically, trade laws were geared to enrich the “mother” country — look at the 19th-century Opium Wars in China, which forced open illegal markets so Britain and its allies could benefit. Between World War II and the 1990s, free trade arguably benefited the economies of the countries involved.

But the new laws, starting with 1994’s North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), recognized that capital is now mobile — it doesn’t “live” anywhere — and owes no allegiance to any flag; only shareholders matter.

Nafta is the paradigm of what are most accurately called deregulation deals. It promised better jobs in both the United States and Mexico. Instead, as well-paid workers in the United States were losing jobs to worse-paid workers in Mexico, badly paid Mexican workers were losing jobs to worse-paid workers in China, which in turn put more pressure on workers in the United States.

In fact, if you wanted to single out a culprit for income stagnation and the decline of the power of labor in the United States, Nafta would be a good candidate. It allowed large corporations to move where tax breaks were best and environmental regulations weakest, while forcing labor to compete against lower global wages. While likely not the only cause, since its passage collective and individual gains have been nearly frozen in Mexico; in the United States, the story is much the same.

The situation may be most dire for Mexican farmers. Millions have been displaced, many emigrating north for menial jobs.

Meanwhile, imports of American corn (a basic staple in the form of tortillas for 5,000 years),increased fourfold. Imports of wheat, rice, cotton and soybeans have increased similarly. In brief, Mexican farmers have gone to work for transnational companies, whether in Mexico, the United States or elsewhere.

Nor did this do much good for farmers to the north, who have seen corn prices fluctuate wildly, leaving them to scramble to maximize yields, which in turn causes environmental damage.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich called the TPP “Nafta on steroids” (“corporate coup d’état” is also good). As the economist Dean Baker said to Bill Moyers, “This really is a deal that’s being negotiated by corporations for corporations, and any benefit it provides to the bulk of the population of this country will be purely incidental.” At this point, nothing about Obama should surprise us, but it’s worth noting that in 2008, as a presidential candidate, he said, “I voted against Cafta, never supported Nafta, and will not support Nafta-style trade agreements in the future.”



All of which is making for some very odd alliances and demonstrating that “far right” and “far left” labels are increasingly useless. That’s because this is a struggle between transnational corporations and just about everyone else.

Of course, some Republican opposition could be crafty positioning, so that when the TPP is found to cost jobs and endanger public health rather than create them and assure it, cynics could simply say, “I told you so.” But in this case Obama has asked for the bad publicity. And although Hillary Clinton’s husband was the architect of this kind of policy, and she worked hard for the TPP while secretary of state, she’s now backing away from what may well be a losing proposition.

That’s the good news: The opposition to fast-tracking appears strong. As Patrick Woodall, a senior policy advocate for Food & Water Watch, said to me, “The forces pushing fast-track are huge, but there is unbelievable public opposition, and at this point the wind is at our back.”

There is such a thing as a good trade agreement, though it’s barely conceivable that Obama and Congress could negotiate one. We could imagine, for example, something that did away with tax havens for corporate profits. (For a detailed analysis of this, see this paper from the Economic Policy Institute.)

But even to have a shot, fast-track must be defeated, and a solid debate must be opened among well-informed representatives, with plenty of public input. More exploitation of labor, fewer public health regulations, more facile production of useless goods and bad food — that is not the direction the global economy needs to go.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/22/op...rtunately.html

There is such a thing as a good trade agreement,....

Not really. Not at the end of the day, week, month or year. The only reason other countries want "trade agreements" with the US is to sell goods in our country and compete with our domestic industries which means to rob our nation of jobs, investment, and technology.

We need tariffs and laws that we enforce here at the port of entry, not free trade treason treaties, pacts or agreements that aren't enforced anywhere.

Judy wrote:

You actually got this one right, Harry.

Yep, that's a rare thing indeed.