Economist and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers expressed support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement Thursday. Summers said the United States economy would benefit more from expanded exports than it would be hurt by import competition.
“The great mistake that runs through most of the debate about TPP … is that they confuse the economics of trade with the economics of trade agreements,” Summers said at the Atlantic’s Summit on the Economy. “The argument people make is that we should be against trade agreements. And what that misses is the profound asymmetry in the trade agreements we have negotiated. … The reality is that there is vastly more market-opening going on in the other countries than there is in the United States. Whatever it is you don’t like about import competition, we’re getting very little more of it. And whatever you do like in terms of job creation through more open markets for exports, we are getting substantially more of it.”
Summers said the Trans-Pacific Partnership also gives the U.S. new influence over labor standards, environmental standards and currency issues in the other countries.
“If we don’t have TPP, our market will still be open. Their market will still be closed and we will not have substantial influence on those issues,” Summers said.
Many liberals oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership, saying it will hurt American workers and the environment. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., are among those who have spoken out against the deal. The trade agreement is supported by the Obama administration, which is a key player in Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations.
Despite his support for the trade agreement, Summers is no conservative. He also spoke on the issue of income inequality and called for a minimum wage hike, more anti-trust enforcement, and other proposed liberal solutions for inequality.
Summers was Treasury secretary at the end of the Clinton administration and later the president of Harvard University for five years and a top economic adviser to Obama.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a proposed trade agreement between the U.S. and 11 Pacific countries, including Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.
