AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka faulted former President Barack Obama Tuesday for siding with business interests in his last year in office and pushing trade policies, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that were bad for workers.
Trumka said that Obama’s late turn from policies that favored labor to more business-friendly ones hurt Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
“He surrounded himself with Wall Street people who didn’t understand working people,” Trumka said at a meeting of the Economic Club of Washington, D.C. “He spent the last year of his administration fighting us on TPP … That probably cost [Democrats] the election.”
The Trans-Pacific Partnership would have lowered tariffs and trade barriers between the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim nations. Getting it confirmed by Congress was a major part of Obama’s economic agenda. He argued the deal was needed to prevent China from dominating the Pacific region economically.
Critics on the Left, including labor unions, environmentalist groups, and others, argued the deal would benefit corporations at the expense of American workers and the economy.
It was an argument that President Trump agreed with and regularly used on the campaign trail — often in language that was strident, even by his standards. “The Trans-Pacific Partnership is another disaster done and pushed by special interests who want to rape our country,” he said in a 2016 speech. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the deal as one of his first acts in office. Clinton officially opposed the deal but was muted in her criticism in order to not undermine the administration’s efforts.
