Over the summer, CNN’s Jake Tapper found and documented 45 instances of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praising and supporting the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free trade deal that will soon come up for a vote in Congress. Many such instances are on video.
And so on Wednesday, when Clinton abruptly decided to come out against the same deal that she once said was the “gold standard” for free trade deals, it seemed pretty clear that America’s most calculating politician and her cynical campaign team were being, well, calculating and cynical.
Clinton said she is against the agreement now, even as she admitted to not examining the entire thing. In a written statement, she offered her nominal excuse for this sudden reversal: “Republican obstruction,” which includes a refusal “to raise the minimum wage or defend workers’ rights or adequately fund job training. As a result…the potential positive effects of trade are diminished, and the negative effects are exacerbated. We’re going into this with one arm tied behind our backs.”
This explanation doesn’t pass the smell test. Even if these concerns were relevant, and they aren’t, it’s not as though Republicans have changed anything they’ve been doing on these issues since 2013, when Clinton was ceaselessly promoting TPP to anyone who would listen.
The most damning fact about Clinton’s flip-flop is that in her own memoir, Hard Choices, she cited the TPP and the American pivot to Asia as one of her greatest diplomatic accomplishments as secretary of State. Clinton is disowning it with such implausible excuses that one need not wonder why roughly 60 percent of voters think her a dishonest and untrustworthy person.
The saddest part is that Clinton was right to be proud of whatever peripheral involvement she had in the TPP. Free trade agreements, although they usually cause disruptions and temporarily hurt some workers, have netted enormous blessings on the United States economy.
The North American Free Trade Agreement, which Clinton’s husband doggedly supported, is a sterling example. In 1990, when its terms were being negotiated, the U.S. exported $51 billion worth of goods and services to Mexico (in today’s dollars). By 2014, it was exporting $240 billion to Mexico, making exports to Mexico one of the fastest-growing segments of the economy over the last 25 years. Mexicans now import nearly three times as much from the U.S. as from China.
Americans have also freely chosen to buy more Mexican goods, leading to larger trade deficits. But the trade deficit with Mexico is a tiny unimportant number compared to the entire U.S. economy, but America’s entire combined trade deficit with its two NAFTA partners last year came from oil imports. Excluding oil, NAFTA has not changed the balance of trade in the region from what it was in 1993. It has, however, massively increased both imports and exports between the U.S. and its immediate neighbors, creating far more wealth in all three countries.
Every free trade agreement made with our southern neighbors since then has both increased American exports and resulted in a trade surplus. That includes the Central American Free Trade Agreement, as well as agreements with Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Panama. Exports to all of these countries have risen, and in some cases trade deficits have become trade surpluses.
Clinton presumably sees her sudden protectionist pose as a way to move left and outflank Vice President Joe Biden, who may soon decide to compete with her for the Democratic presidential nomination. But Clinton cannot outbid Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump when it comes to stoking popular ignorance about free trade. If it helps her win the nomination, this flip-flop will reinforce the notion that Clinton will say and do absolutely anything, no matter how much it evokes her contempt for voters’ intelligence, if she thinks it might slightly increase her chances of moving back into the White House.
