President Obama is confident the Democratic Party will reflect the diversity of views on a massive trade deal with Asia and other world powers when it meets to decide that plank in the platform, the White House said Thursday.
The Democrats’ platform committee will hold its final meeting this weekend, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and his followers have been trying to push language opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a sweeping trade deal Obama has been pushing for more than two years.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Thursday the White House has had “opportunities” to weigh in on the platform process but does not expect to weigh in strongly with a veto of any provision.
“Ultimately, the Democratic platform is supposed to reflect the views and values and priorities of the Democratic Party,” Earnest told reporters traveling with Obama to Poland for the NATO summit, noting that “there’s ample public evidence, public data, to indicate that a majority of Democrats actually agree with the president’s approach” to trade and TPP.
“So we believe that that fact about the approach of the president and support for that approach by Democrats in Congress and Democrats across the country, a majority of them, should be reflected in the party platform as well,” Earnest said.
“There’s a well-established process for writing the party platform, and we’ve got confidence in their ability to handle that responsibility,” he added.
Earnest reiterated the president’s view that the U.S. is already deeply involved in the global economy and that cannot be undone. To combat the negative impacts of globalization, the United States must renegotiate better deals with other countries rather than let the global market operate without America’s input.
“So the president’s view is that we should leverage the benefits and advantages that are enjoyed by the United States so that we can ensure that more communities and more workers and more businesses inside the United States can enjoy the benefits of globalization,” Earnest said.
