Washington Post - President Obama signaled Wednesday that, at least on international trade, he is willing to defy his fellow Democrats and his own liberal base to pursue a partnership with Republicans. Trade represents one of Obama’s best chances for a legacy-building achievement in the final two years of his presidency, but he acknowledged that it is an idea he still has to sell to many of his traditional allies.
Speaking at a gathering of business leaders, Obama offered his strongest public defense of his administration’s pursuit of a major 12-nation trade deal in the Asia Pacific, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that has been opposed by Democrats, labor unions and environmental groups.
The administration has argued that the trade deals will boost U.S. exports and lower tariffs for American goods in the fast-growing Asia-Pacific region, where the United States has faced increasing economic competition from China.
“Those who oppose these trade deals ironically are accepting a status quo that is more damaging to American workers,” Obama said at the Business Roundtable. “There are folks in my own party and in my own constituency that have legitimate complaints about some of the trend lines of inequality, but are barking up the wrong tree when it comes to opposing TPP, and I’m going to have to make that argument.”
4 comments:
He's channeling Clinton again, I see. Arsehole.
If critics are "barking up the wrong tree", maybe Obama should move to release the actual text of the TPP - which has been shared only with corporate lobbyists. Wikileaks has managed to get a few draft chapters, provisions which have nothing to do at all with "workers" and everything to do with expanding a corporatist agenda.
I predict the TPP will be passed the same way NAFTA was passed: the out going president will push for it, the candidates for the presidency will campaign saying that they "have deep concerns" abut the deal and then shortly after the new president takes office it there will be some talk of sidebar deals and amendments and then it will pass congress and be signed into law with virtually no changes and anyone who has critical words to say will be excluded from any MSM coverage.
"trade deal" as a label comes straight out of neo-confederate thinking, that the US is a league of special interests. Lincoln, FDR would have seen this as a surrender like Appomattox or the treaties ending WWII. Here the treaty organizations have conquered the US, without German or Japanese industrialists having to make any weapons to secure the triumph of fascism, with the US as lead partner and weapons manufacturer. This might have happened much sooner if Hoover had been reelected and followed by a President Lindbergh.
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