Labor secretary Tom Perez on Sunday defended Hillary Clinton’s criticism of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, the same deal that he said he supports and that President Obama has asked him to promote.
“Secretary Clinton has been very clear that she opposes TPP, and Secretary Clinton has been very clear that she has a real plan to bring jobs back to America,” Perez said on NBC.
Perez, a possible vice presidential pick for Clinton, said later in the same interview that he supports the deal Clinton opposes.
“This is what the president tasked me with doing, Chuck, and I was proud to do it,” Perez said. “We want to go to school on the mistakes and the lessons of past trade agreements. We want to build a trade regime that, again, the North Star is the American worker, protecting the American worker.”
“And that’s what we’ve set out to do, and that’s what I believe we have done,” he continued. “The president and Clinton have a disagreement on whether TPP has gone that far.”
“This is not the first time in the history of the Democratic Party that there have been differences of opinion,” Perez said.
Despite calling TPP the “gold standard in trade agreements” during an overseas trip in 2012, Clinton came out against the accord last fall. She has since claimed the final agreement fails to meet the “high bar” she set in terms of job creation and wages in the U.S.
Both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have ripped the former secretary of state on the issue of trade, suggesting she’s in favor of deals that have led to an increase in the flow of American manufacturing jobs going overseas.
