Discussion for article #236256
If Obama is right that either we write the rules for workers, product safety, et al. or China will (not to mention the GOP were it to win the presidency) then I for one am for this deal.
I recall Romney admiring so strongly the treatment of Chinese laborers–locked into their factories at night surrounded by barbed wire, and forced to sleep in dormitories there. In fact it was THAT part of the infamous 47% tape that the waiter originally wanted to see make headlines.
Do you trust the Chinese or the GOP to treat labor right, to not poison our food and atmosphere? Tell me now true.
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Personally, I’d like to know what Joseph Stiglitz has to say about the deal. I think I might trust him more than, say, PHARMA, or any groups who may have been involved in TPP’s drafting.
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What speech are we talking about? When was it made, and to whom was it given? Any possible links to the speech itself?
If the choice is whether American and International mega-corporations will write the trade rules or China will write the trade rules, I am not at all certain which choice is better. If the mega-corporations (the major outsources of the world) write the rules, why would anyone think that would be good for workers in America?
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For what it’s worth, Paul Krugman leans against the deal, but not really for “trade” reasons. He argues (correctly, I’m sure) that classic issues of trade - tariffs, quotas, and whatnot - aren’t really that contentious any more. Trade is pretty liberal amongst the countries involved. The real issues are with IP and international dispute settlement.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com//2015/04/26/this-is-not-a-trade-agreement/
I have argued in these threads and others against people who knee-jerk against trade deals because OMG American Job-Killing NAFTA China owns us already wharrrgarbl. Warren has, to my dismay, used these types of liberal red-meat arguments to whip up popular opinion against the deal.
And also “secrecy”, which sounds really bad until you consider that just a couple of months ago the US Congress told Iran that they could just ignore whatever the Obama Administration was telling them because as soon as he’s gone any deal would go up in smoke. Our trading partners give no fucks about our internal political dynamics (so, “hey, but that’s just the crazy people we elected!” will not carry weight) and so they’d understandably be wary of negotiating a deal that was simultaneously being blasted in the US press and undermined by the US Congress.
I trust Obama, and Krugman, and Warren, so it seems to me there are no easy answers. I’m skeptical of the deal, but not automatically against it because of wharrrgarbl. I don’t generally like government secrecy, unless it is necessary to achieve a tactical or strategic goal - and given the utter clusterfuck that is our Congress and our media I can see why some secrecy may be required even to get our partners to the table.
I sure wish the parents wouldn’t fight, though…
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I understand that labor unions were also at the table. So who really knows?
The Congress is privy to the details, which are still in negotiation. Why has no one leaked the odious proposals some claim are in the deal? I know they’re not supposed to take notes, but a Harvard professor surely has the mental acuity to recall them.
Warren is doing all she can to warn us within the extreme restrictions that have been imposed on Congress as they try to make themselves familiar with the bill. It’s already been written about so I won’t go into much detail here, but it’s basically a farce of an arrangement that’s designed to keep people from reading it, or from being able to accurately recall what they do read. And even if they have perfect recall, they are forbidden under penalty of arrest from relaying the information to anyone that wasn’t in the room with them. And only sitting members of Congress are allowed.
Warren is obviously very concerned with what she has read. But she just can’t say out loud what that is exactly, for fear of arrest. So she’s doing the next best thing, and she’s ringing that bell for all it’s worth within the restrictions she’s been saddled with. Don’t kill the messenger.
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Me too and I trust this President to do the right thing. This whole thing is getting very silly and just another excuse for the lame stream media to run a non-story into the ground
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No she’s not concerned. She has already admitted that she is for trade. All trade deals are done in secret because these deals and the provisions change every day. Can you imagine if Congress were able to make amendments and with all the crazies in congress, there would be hundreds of amendments by all the different representatives trying to tailor it to their needs. There is a reason for this, The deal will be available for all to see when all the provisions are finalized. I still could never believe the President will negotiate a deal that would undue all the progress he has made to bring this economy back. I can understand the reluctance to the trade deal based on the bad deals that were made in the past so I believe him when he says this is different. And the bottom line is that we either negotiate our deal with these countries, because if we don’t China will and you can believe, our country will be on the short end of the stick if they do and their deal will not contain the safeguards this one does
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It would seem Warren is to the left what FOX is to the right. Eleven countries are involved in this deal. If every citizen of all eleven countries is allowed to read and lobby for their individual “well being” nothing will happen. If nothing happens the U.S. loses on international trade. It is interesting that we do not hear all of the hysterics from Canada or others of our trusted trade partners.
Additionally, I would like to hear some real academic discussion on how much the past trade deals have really hurt U.S. workers. Where would we be without those trade deals? It seems, to one who admittedly is not an expert, that more manufacturing was lost to China than to anyone else and they were not part of NAFTA. More manufacturing was lost, it seems, because the same workers complaining about lost jobs shopped at WallMart buying Chinese (and others) cheap products as opposed to U.S. made products
There’ll be months before the final vote to get his opinion, and to formulate your own if you choose to read it. It’s “secret” for now (ie, only Congressfolk and senators can see it) because it’s an international agreement still being negotiated; those are never made public until they’re finalized. (Recall the GOP yelping about the Iran deal before any of us had seen the framework.) And the reason for fast track (or “greasing the skids,” in Warren’s words) is that, as a multi-party treaty, if we want to change it once it’s been finalized, that’ll open the door to everyone else wanting to make changes and nothing will ever get done. And frankly, I’ve been at a loss to understand why we’d want this GOP Congress to take a shot at gutting the improvements over NAFTA that Obama – backed enthusiastically by Tom Perez, no corporate stooge – says have been made. We’ll have months before the vote to determine how real those improvements are.
For now, call me agnostic: I’ve got reservations about intellectual property and currency, but I want to see what’s actually there. On Warren’s sovereignty issue, we’ve already got such tribunals and we’ve won every case thus far; that’s not to say that’ll continue (or that it’ll be a good thing if it does when a future Republican administration goes to bat for our chemical companies, eg), but for now it’s not my top worry. Paul Krugman, based on what he’s been told about the deal, says he’s a “lukewarm opponent,” mostly because of IP, but he also says he thinks it’s perfectly valid to support it for geostrategic reasons (something that weighs heavily with me). And given how open trade already is, he actually doesn’t think it’ll make much difference on jobs either plus or minus:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/this-is-not-a-trade-agreement/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Opinion&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs®ion=Body&_r=0
At this point, my biggest concern about this is that all the opponents are so dug in that if it actually turns out that Obama really has brought a good deal, they won’t be able to acknowledge it.
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Well, we wrote much the same comment at much the same time, but you did much the better job (even on the same link – how the hell did mine get so long?). Wish I’d seen yours before I started mine; I needn’t have bothered… And yeah, I hate the familial discord…
So do the people at Nike who, as Senator Sanders pointed out, doesn’t employ one blessed single manufacturing worker in the US. According to some unnamed White House official, Obama swung by Nike HQ to tout “how businesses large and small” can benefit from expanded trade. Well, no shit.
But the people in Seattle, whose port is now the staging ground for Arctic offshore drilling by Shell, may not trust him to do the right thing all that much.
So yeah, he’s doing the “right” thing all right. He’s got tremendous support from the right. Paul Ryan was on TV this morning providing just that.
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Excellent comment. TPP would be DOA if it actually had half the provisions that everyone seems to think are in there.So this dustup with the Senate dems and Warren was totally uncalled for. Bad message management by BO.
BTW, love green cheek conures. My wife used to breed them.
Yes, we certainly can’t have the citizens reading things and giving their own viewpoint into how they should be ruled. Why that would be absurd!
It probably reminded him of the factory workers in the US sweatshop paradise of Saipan.
If Obama is right that either we write the rules for workers, product safety, et al. or China will (not to mention the GOP were it to win the presidency) then I for one am for this deal.
Please see my breakdown of the 11 other nations in TPP