DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton is distancing herself from President Barack Obama over a contentious trade proposal, encouraging the president to address concerns raised by congressional Democrats and negotiate a better deal with 11 Pacific Rim nations.
The Democratic presidential front-runner on Sunday told Iowa Democrats that Obama should seek more concessions as a way to improve the Trans Pacific Partnership and suggested she’d drive a harder bargain than Obama.
“No president would be a tougher negotiator on behalf of American workers, either with our trade partners or Republicans on Capitol Hill, than I would be,” Clinton said. But Clinton, who is campaigning Monday in New Hampshire, declined to take a firm stance on the trade deal that has split Obama from House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and rank-and-filed Democrats.
That wasn’t acceptable to one of her chief Democratic rivals for the 2016 race, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
“Is she for it? Is she against it?” Sanders told reporters in Indianola, Iowa. “Those are your two options.”
The White House and Republican leaders in Congress are facing long odds in reviving the legislation after congressional Democrats helped defeat a job retraining program last week in a blow to Obama’s attempt to secure so-called fast track authority. Without the authority to negotiate trade deals that Congress can approve or reject, but not amend, the president would face difficulty in securing the Asia trade deal after years of work.
Congressional Republicans have suggested they may try to revive the bill as early as this week. Pelosi decided to side with House Democrats and oppose Obama’s plan, saying it required “a better deal for America’s workers.”
In Iowa, Clinton appeared to seek middle ground, saying while some support the deal and others vehemently oppose it, “I kind of fall in the group that says ‘what’s in it?’ And ‘let’s make it as good as it can be, and then let’s make a decision.'”
But that is unlikely to satisfy liberals and labor unions in the party who have organized against the trade pact.
Sanders has made his opposition to the TPP one of the centerpieces of his uphill campaign. Addressing Democratic activists in a park pavilion, the so-called “democratic socialist” railed against what he called a “disastrous” trade deal and said he would do everything he could to scuttle it.
“I kind of think people would prefer to hear what your position is — are you for it or against it?” Sanders said, asked later by reporters about Clinton’s trade comments. “Rather than passing the buck and saying well, in a sense, I don’t have a position. That is not leadership.”
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley has also opposed the deal and likened it to the North American Free Trade Agreement signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1993.
Democratic leaders, O’Malley said, should “step up and urge Congress not to fast track this bad trade deal. We’ve seen this movie before with NAFTA — a bad trade deal that devastated communities across the country and cost a million American jobs.” His statement made no mention of Clinton.
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It’s about workers, and it’s about sovereignty.
There’s no doubt jobs will be lost – there’s no “improving” it to prevent that, which is why there’s a Trade Adjustment Allowance to teach semi-skilled workers how to make beds and clean bathrooms in hotels, and how to stock shelves at department stores.
But as is happening with the WTO already, we won’t be able to label products in the interest of an informed consumer. And should we decide that a coal mining concern can’t blow off the tops of our mountains, they’ll sue us for what they contend to be lost profits.
Those are just two of the known consequences aside from jobs, and who knows what other things lurk when 500+ corporate lobbyists convene to write a “trade bill” in secret.
So I appreciate Secretary Clinton and Rep. Pelosi advocating for a better deal, but wonder what difference it’ll make in the end.
Not saying I disagree on substance, but another way to look at this, is, "Just what did you expect trying to negotiate for fast-track during a Presidential election?"
What does that mean Hillary? Where are you Hillary? No where…
So why again does the taxpayer have to pay for the “re-training?” If these companies want this deal so bad, why aren’t they the ones that have to pony up the money to pay for the lost jobs? Considering the amount of money they stand to rake in tax-free, shouldn’t each company fork over the 700 million per year to ensure that there will be enough money to help with the so called “re-training?”
A principal goal of any trade deal should be to raise the standards of living in the trading partner countries. If NAFTA had worked, Mexico would be moving toward 1st world status instead of toward a failed 2nd world cartel dominated state. Trade deals seem to be aimed at making entrenched rich people richer without helping the folks at the bottom. We will always bleed jobs right up to the moment people in our trading partner nations see their standards of living grow to first world status.