Thread: Jeff Sessions: Paul Ryan Needs to Change on Trade

(video at source link)

by JEFF POOR
18 Jul 2016
499 comments

Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), an early supporter of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, discussed the GOP as a whole and what direction it needs to take on policy specifics.

Sessions advised Trump not to get too in the weeds with policy details, and also had some words of advice for his Republican congressional colleagues on trade, specifically House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI).

Transcript as follows:

MIKA BRZEZINSKI, MSNBC HOST: All right, joining us now, Republican senator from Alabama, Senator Jeff Sessions. He was the first senator to endorse Donald Trump for president and he will be among tonight’s speakers kicking off the Republican National Convention here in Cleveland.

So I was wrong, there are heavy hitters.

JOE SCARBOROUGH, MSNBC HOST: That’s right. Well, Roll Tide first of all. Always —

SEN. JEFF SESSIONS (R), ALABAMA: Roll Tide.

SCARBOROUGH: Yes, and you know, Senator, you said something very interesting, which was you’ve said something that — you said the Republican Party is finally getting around to where its base and rank and file have been for many, many years. Explain that.

SESSIONS: There’s no doubt about it. The working Americans that have provided Ronald Reagan with a victory, big victory of George Bush in 2004, are just average, good people. And they are frustrated about what’s happening. Things are not working well for them. Median income in this country is down $4,186 since 1999. So you have this steady decline in people’s financial well being. And politicians haven’t understood it, they haven’t talked about it, and I do believe bad trade deals and excessive flow of labor through immigration and illegal immigration is impacting wages also. No doubt about it.

SCARBOROUGH: And you’re saying the Republican Party has just ignored these issues for too long.

SESSIONS: Right. The Democratic Party has been on the wrong side of those. They’ve advocated those. The Republicans have — their constituency have expected them to be more effective in defending their interests as we go forward.

SCARBOROUGH: Mark?

MARK HALPERIN, MSNBC SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Donald Trump needs to be more specific about policy in order to win, or he can stay this vague and still win?

SESSIONS: I think he does not need to get in the weeds with a whole lot of details. He wants to say that he needs to go forward with a plan that would strengthen our immigration system, make sure it serves our interests, and he needs to say that the trade deals, he’s going to fight for every single job. We believe in trade. We are a trading nation. But we’re not going to allow our trading partners to cheat, to manipulate the currency manipulation and other things that take jobs unfairly. We cannot lose jobs in this economy.

WILLIE GEIST, MSNBC HOST: Senator, you heard some of the reaction in the room when you said you don’t believe he has to get into details. Don’t people voting, deciding who should be President of the United States, deserve to know specific policies —

BRZEZINSKI: Maybe just a few?

GEIST: — that that president would enact when he arrives in the White House?

(APPLAUSE)

SESSIONS: Well, sure, and he will do that. There’s no doubt about it. But I mean just lay out minute details of your foreign policy and how you’re going to deal with Iraq and the Kurds and so forth, that’s not — he’s not prepared —

HALPERIN: Where would you like to see him more specific on the issue of job creation and incomes?

SESSIONS: I think he can be more specific on trade, how he believes that trade is good for America and how he can show that we’ve had bad trade deals and how things are not working well. I think he needs to be more specific in understanding — in articulating the pain that the average American is feeling now. And why that’s happening. I mean, it’s instinctive that he’s got it. He’s talked about it and people are responding to it. But I think more detail could be helpful.

BRZEZINSKI: Any concern about his vice presidential pick supporting NAFTA? Having some differences? What do you make of this alliance?

SESSIONS: Well, you know, I supported most of the trade deals. I supported the Korean — when the last big one. I supported the China deal. I think they were now mistakes. The data came in. It was not anything close to what they promised. In Korea, they promised — when Obama signed it and I voted for it — that we would increase exports to Korea by $10 billion a year. It was $30 million in increase last year, four years later. Whereas their imports to us were $15 billion increase. The trade deficit is more than double. The China trade deficit was supposed to be the same. It has increased fivefold.

So we need to be —

SCARBOROUGH: So — so how do you —

(CROSSTALK)

SESSIONS: So Mike was there, at that time, and we were supporting that. But the data is showing it’s not working.

SCARBOROUGH: So how do you square that with what Paul Ryan believes, what Mitch McConnell believes? What the overwhelming number of Republicans in Congress believe about trade?

SESSIONS: Well, I was part of that, but we’ve got to look at the data.

SCARBOROUGH: They’re still over there. You and Donald Trump and a couple other Washington — Donald Trump are sitting, one (ph).

SESSIONS: Right, he did. And the Republican Party is the Republican voters. And they are on Trump’s side —

SCARBOROUGH: Yes.

SESSIONS: — in sentiment.

SCARBOROUGH: So does Paul Ryan need to change?

SESSIONS: Absolutely he needs to change. Just like I have.

SCARBOROUGH: All right.

BRZEZINSKI: Wow. OK.

SCARBOROUGH: Message of the (INAUDIBLE) here.

SESSIONS: That’s great.

SCARBOROUGH: Oh, I got to ask him one more important question.

BRZEZINSKI: Yes, Roll Tide.

SCARBOROUGH: Crimson Tide, how are they going to look this year?

SESSIONS: They’re going to be good. They got a pretty good coach and I think we’ll have a good quarterback and they can go a long way.

SCARBOROUGH: All right.

BRZEZINSKI: Senator Jeff Sessions, thank you very much.

http://www.breitbart.com/video/2016/...ange-on-trade/

Paul Ryan's Gotta Go!

Support Paul Nehlen!

SESSIONS: Well, you know, I supported most of the trade deals. I supported the Korean — when the last big one. I supported the China deal. I think they were now mistakes. The data came in. It was not anything close to what they promised.

We must allow politicans to backpedal and change sometimes if things don't work out according to estimates as is with Sen. Sessions.

The data came in. It was not anything close to what they promised.

It was the complete opposite of what they promised. They lied to you. Common sense and third grade math would have told you they were lying dog traitors selling out our industrial base, our workers, our citizens, and our taxpayers.

Joe is a huge disappointment. Joe Scarborrough was very uncooth when he turned on Trump. He would kiss his ass to bolster his ratings and for a moment, I believe Joe thought he might be his VP (many, many months ago). I think he went too far and tarnished his own image when he fell out of bed with Trump regarding the judge and a few other issues. His ratings were not going up, he was telling the opposition what they already knew and the base why they shouldn't support Trump. I think Trump may be right and the show could possibly be headed into the seventh or eight inning.

Hillary adviser confirms lame duck vote on globalist TPP pact

Says Congress will approve deal regardless of Clinton posturing

Published: 07/12/2016 at 9:16 PM
Curtis Ellis

Just hours after Bernie Sanders agreed to endorse his primary opponent, a top adviser to Hillary Clinton has confirmed that her avowed opposition to the TransPacific Partnership agreement is just meaningless campaign rhetoric.

Kurt Campbell, Clinton’s top adviser on Asia, told the Australian newspaper that Congress will approve the unpopular globalist pact in a lame-duck session later this year regardless of Clinton’s posturing.

Campbell served with Clinton in the State Department and is touted to become secretary of state if she wins election. He is the main author of the administration’s “pivot to Asia” policy, of which the TransPacific Partnership, TPP, is a major component.

Hillary Clinton touted the pact as the “gold standard” when she was secretary of state. But on the campaign trail she changed her stand under pressure from Bernie Sanders who, like Donald Trump, opposes TPP.

Trump stridently opposes the globalist pact and has challenged journalists to ask Clinton if she will withdraw from TPP on her first day in office as he has vowed to do.
Clinton now says she doesn’t support TPP “in its current form.”

Clinton’s rhetorical stance is a replay of Bill Clinton’s 1992 positioning on NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and her own flip-flops on other trade pacts. Candidate Bill Clinton opposed NAFTA, but as president he made cosmetic changes to the pact, declared it fixed, and pushed it through Congress.

In her earlier presidential run, Hillary said she opposed the then-pending free trade agreements with Colombia and South Korea, declaring, “I will do everything I can to urge the Congress to reject the Colombia Free Trade Agreement.”

But emails from her private server as secretary of state reveal Clinton was personally lobbying Democrat members of Congress to support the Colombia deal, and she lobbied Congress to pass the South Korea free trade agreement as well.

The revelation from her adviser Kurt Camppbell that Clinton would not oppose a lame-duck vote on TPP is straight from Barack Obama’s 2008 playbook.

While campaigning in the fierce 2008 Ohio primary, Obama said the U.S. should withdraw from NAFTA if it could not be renegotiated. But at the same time, Obama’s top economic adviser, Austin Goolsbee, was telling Canadian officials that what Obama was saying was just campaign rhetoric, not a real policy plan.

The TPP has become a central issue in the 2016 presidential campaign. It is a sweeping 12-nation regulatory pact that empowers an international commission of unelected foreign bureaucrats to rule on everything from U.S. border controls to its food, drugs, energy and Internet.

If approved, TPP would lay the groundwork for entangling the U.S. in a Pacific Union akin to the European Union the voters of Great Britain just rejected. Like the European Union, TPP institutionalizes the free movement of people, goods and capital across borders.

Numerous surveys show Americans across the political spectrum oppose the TPP because it would send more jobs overseas and hurt Americans.

http://www.wnd.com/2016/07/hillary-a...xVHiexpF9Pe.99

Obama advances stealth plan to pass TPP

Pushing in lame-duck session despite growing voter opposition in both parties

Published: 07/04/2016 at 5:17 PM
On Oct. 7, in an interview with PBS’s “News Hour,” Clinton displayed her political hypocrisy over free trade, not only by coming out against TPP that she had supported as secretary of state, but opposing the U.S.-Korea free trade agreement that she endorsed and lobbied Congress to pass while at the State Department.

During her 2008 presidential run Clinton opposed a free-trade deal with Columbia, saying: “I oppose the deal. I have spoken out against the deal, I will vote against the deal, and I will do everything I can to urge Congress to reject the Columbia Free Trade Agreement.”

But emails released in February made clear that as secretary of state, Clinton was lobbying Democratic members of Congress to support free trade deal in Panama and South Korea, as well as Colombia, with her assistant Huma Abedin writing Secretary Clinton emails advising her on how to lobby various Democratic members of Congress to win over their support.

“We cannot put globalization genie back in the bottle”

Last week, in a speech to the Cato Institute in Washington, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said he was finding a “very receptive” audience on Capitol Hill and, despite the legislation being opposed the presidential candidate political parties, he is feeling “very confident” he will have the votes to pass TPP during the post-election lame duck session.

“The good news is that, as I meet with Members of Congress, they are increasingly appreciating the benefits of the agreement and the costs of delay,” Froman said.
He acknowledged public opposition, but he insisted the elite position of professional economists and politicians overrode the failure to understand the importance of passing TPP, as displayed by an increasing number of those planning to vote in November this year.

“Now, there is a great deal of anxiety among the American people, evident in the current election dynamic, not to mention across much of the developed world, and Dan referred to that in his introduction,” Froman said, condescending to his understanding of popular opinion.

“There is concern that other countries don’t follow the same rules we do, but instead act unfairly; that the benefits of growth have not been broadly shared; that the system is rigged in favor of the few,” he continued.

“It is important that we not ignore these concerns,” he said tactically. “They are real and legitimate. The question is what to do about them.”

What we should do, Froman explained, was to avoid giving into the petty nationalism and sophomoric populism expressed in the recent Brexit vote resolving that the U.K. should exit the European Union.

Instead, Froman suggested, the solution was to understand that while globalism was inevitable, the U.S. must take the lead by passing TPP before Obama leaves the White House, continuing the process of opening up U.S. markets through TPP to an extent never before imaginable.

“Globalization is a fact made possible by the containerization of shipping, the spread of broadband, and the opening of countries like China and Eastern Europe that used to be closed to the global economy and are now part of it,” he insisted. “Globalization is a force; you can’t just wish it away or put the genie back in the bottle.”

“We start from the fact that the U.S. already has one of the world’s most open economies in the world, in large part because of decisions made decades ago – and supported by 12 Presidents, six Democrats and six Republicans,” Froman said in conclusion. “If the United States were to turn inward, the results would be economically devastating. History has proven beyond a doubt that protectionism doesn’t work.”

Obama administration “fully invested” in passing TPP

In his Cato speech, Froman noted the Obama administration was planning a final push before Obama leaves office to pitch one more time to the Americans the virtues of globalism.

On TPP, Froman made clear the administration’s goal is “to do everything possible to reach an agreement this year, with the administration unwilling after the Brexit vote to abandon completely the European version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, known by the acronym TTIP.

Just last week, Froman noted, his office met with European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström, making “good, accelerate progress” toward keeping TTIP on track despite the Brexit vote.

Speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City last June about the future of the TPP and the importance of U.S. engagement in defining trade rules in the Asia-Pacific region, Froman was the first administration official to acknowledge that the administration is working on the implementing bill, despite then-growing evidence that Democratic Party politicians running for election this year, including Hillary Clinton, were increasingly concerned behind closed doors to sidestep this issue.

Speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations, Froman highlighted that there is “a certain urgency” to get TPP done this year because the speaker of the House, the Senate majority leader and the president are all pro-trade but warned “that all could be different a year from now.”

He noted that President Obama is “fully invested” in pushing for a TPP vote this year.

“We have a whole White House, whole cabinet effort underway with hundreds of events around the country by cabinet and sub-cabinet officials,” he said, stressing that he was working quietly with Congress to find solutions that do not require reopening or renegotiating the TPP free trade deal.


http://www.wnd.com/2016/07/obama-adv...gBW7i59StXQ.99

Obama is such a snake and traitor. He has totally betrayed our country and citizens.

Obama: I'm still president and I support TPP trade deal

By Kevin Liptak, CNN White House Producer
Updated 2:06 PM ET, Tue August 2, 2016



Donald Trump slams Trans-Pacific Partnership

Story highlights

• The state visit is the first of its kind for a Southeast Asian country under Obama
• Obama plans to reiterate his commitment to seeing the TPP deal through

Washington (CNN)President Barack Obama stressed Tuesday that he still he plans to move ahead with the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership deal while he's in office despite bipartisan opposition on trade.

"Right now I'm president, and I'm for it," Obama said at a midday press conference with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. "And I think I've got the better argument. I've made this argument before. I'll make it again. We are part of a global economy. We're not reversing that."

The remark seemed a rebuke not only to Donald Trump -- who has lambasted the TPP deal on the campaign trail -- but also Hillary Clinton, who also opposes the plan.

President Obama welcomes Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong during an arrival ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House August 2, 2016 in Washington, DC.

"I've got some very close friends, people I admire a lot, but who I just disagree with them. And that's okay," Obama said. "I respect the arguments that they're making. They're coming from a sincere concern about the position of workers and wages in this country. But I think I've got the better argument."

But Congress has shown little urgency in moving forward with a vote to ratify the deal, leaving in limbo one of Obama's signature foreign policy objectives.
Obama, however, expressed optimism that once the election was over, lawmakers would give the TPP due consideration.

"Hopefully after the election is over and the dust settles there will be more attention to the actual facts behind the deal and it won't just be be a political symbol or a political football," Obama said.

Earlier, Obama acknowledged the concerns over trade.

"Forces of globalization and technology have not always benefited everybody evenly," Obama acknowledged. "There are fears and anxieties that people may be left behind. These anxieties are legitimate. They can't be ignored."

He continued, "It means we have to do everything we can to make sure everybody shares in prosperity."

But he still stressed the benefits that would accrue to the US under the massive deal.

Obama also noted that he and Lee had discussed the contentious maritime claims in the South China Sea, where countries are locked in disputes over small islands and freedom of navigation.

"We reaffirmed our shared commitment to building a regional order where all nations play by the same rules and disputes are resolved peacefully," Obama said.

The White House is honoring Singapore's Prime Minister with the highest form of Washington flattery: a formal state visit capped by a black-tie dinner featuring Maryland blue crab and American Wagyu beef. Midday, the leaders will hold a joint news conference.

The grand welcome -- the first of its kind for a Southeast Asian country under Obama -- is another attempt to advance the historic TPP deal, which has been agreed to by 12 member nations but needs congressional ratification.

Despite the lack of traction on Capitol Hill and regular beatings the topic gets on the campaign trail, Obama plans to reiterate his commitment to seeing the deal through Tuesday.

"He will once again say to the Prime Minister that he's committed to getting TPP done, and doing so before the end of his term," Daniel Kritenbrink, Obama's Asia director, said on Friday.

But it's unclear what assurances Obama can provide to the visiting leader from Singapore, one of the 12 signatories to the agreement. Republican leaders in Congress have said they don't plan to bring TPP up for consideration until after November's general election, if at all. And both Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, and Hillary Clinton, the Democrat, rail against the deal.

Delegates at last week's Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia voiced strong anti-TPP sentiment, claiming the deal would destroy American jobs.

But Obama insisted in an interview published Monday that he would succeed in getting approval for the deal.

"I know that the politics around trade can be very difficult -- especially in an election year," Obama told Singapore newspaper The Strait Times. "There are legitimate concerns and anxieties that the forces of globalization are leaving too many people behind -- and we have to take those concerns seriously and address them."

"The answer isn't to turn inward and embrace protectionism," Obama said. "We can't just walk away from trade. In a global economy where our economies and supply chains are deeply integrated, it's not even possible."

During talks Tuesday morning, Obama and Lee are also expected to discuss efforts to combat terror, including in Southeast Asia, where Islamist cells are known to operate.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/02/politi...=urgent-re-tpp