President Obama called criticism of a Pacific trade deal “trying to score political points” Monday, countering arguments that the hot-button Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would be bad for the United States.
“I have not yet seen a credible argument that once we get TPP in place, we’re gonna be worse off. We’re demonstrably better off, American workers and American businesses are better off if we get this deal passed,” Obama said at a press conference in Vietnam.
The president said that opposition to the pact amounted to typical politicization in an election year and will continue to be “noisy.” But he remains optimistic about its chances in Congress.
“I remain confident we’re gonna get it done. The reason I remain confident is because it’s the right thing to do,” he said. “It’s good for the country: It’s good for America, good for the region, it’s good for the world.”
Both Obama and leading congressional Republicans agree that the TPP, which was signed by the 12 participating nations in February, should not be sent to lawmakers for approval until after primary season. But the GOP leaders have been skeptical of the deal’s prospects, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell saying a vote shouldn’t come during election season at all, and House speaker Paul Ryan casting doubt that it could pass.
“The point is we shouldn’t bring something up if we’re not confident that we have the support there for it so I think the president and the administration has a lot more work to do to get support for this document because there are some legitimate concerns about it,” Ryan said in February.
The presumptive nominees for president in the two major parties, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, have opposed the deal, though Clinton has a complicated history advocating it as it was being finalized during her time as secretary of state. Trump’s opposition to the TPP is in his wheelhouse of dissent on U.S. trade policy. He took out an op-ed in USA Today in March to denounce the pact, calling it a “betrayal.” He singled out Vietnam, where Obama made his remarks Monday.
“The TPP — a 12-nation pact — includes Vietnam, a country with vastly lower wages than the United States. Since there is a small market for U.S. goods in Vietnam, this will be an almost entirely one-sided arrangement as thousands of U.S. workers are laid off and production shipped to Vietnam instead,” Trump wrote.
Obama, on the other hand, argued that the deal was good for American businesses, since Vietnam would reduce tariffs on American exports.
