November 11, 2016

Word: TPP

Lori Wallach, Global Trade Watch - The election of President Donald Trump, and the slew of exit polls showing Americans’ ire over our failed trade policies that fueled that outcome, should dissuade Republican congressional leaders from pushing the Trans-Pacific Partnership  in the lame-duck session of Congress that starts next week.

But even if the TPP never goes into effect, its damage will be felt worldwide — in the form of the election of President Donald Trump.

Yes, many factors contributed to this outcome. But it was not all racists and other haters who elected Trump. It was also a lot of working class voters who supported President Barack Obama twice. Hillary Clinton suffered her biggest losses in the places where Obama was strongest among white voters.

Did we have to get to this to end the era of smug Democratic and Republican political elites scoffing at the notion that trade is a salient political issue — and relentlessly pushing more of the same policies to the detriment of a voting bloc otherwise known as a majority of our fellow Americans?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am counting the plusses and minuses of the Trump victor.

Plusses:

TPP and TPIP are dead in the water.
Gratuitous wars might (temporarily) be a thing of the past.
Obamacare will be repealed (yes, that is a plus, Obamacare took a dysfunctional health care system and made it mandatory)
Political correctness took a major hit.
The Democratic Party might wake up to the fact that being "conservative lite" is not a winning strategy.
The war against guns will take a holiday.
The prospect of nuclear war with Russia dropped considerably.

Minuses

More coal burning, Global warming and environmental catastrophe.
An out of control demagogue at the head of a government now equipped with all the tools to establish a police state.

Overall, it was just like the election. A question of who would do more damage.