Hillary Clinton on Tuesday finally answered a question about her stance on President Obama’s plans to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but refused to take a side, instead saying it depends on what the final deal looks like.
“I have said I want to judge the final agreement,” she told an audience in Iowa during remarks about small business manufacturing.
“I have been for trade agreements, I have been against trade agreements,” she added. “I have tried to make the evaluation depending upon what I thought they would produce, and that’s what I am waiting to see.”
Democrats in particular have been keen to figure out Clinton’s position on trade, since the issue has forced most Democrats to go against Obama, for fear that a TPP agreement would only hurt U.S. job creation and lower wages. On the other side are Republicans, who support the TPP and are hoping to give Obama the authority to negotiate trade agreements that can’t be amended by Congress.
In her remarks before a panel of small businesspeople, Clinton stressed that if she were to win the White House in 2016, she would push to ease federal regulations on small, community banks.
“We need to cut the unnecessary red tape that costs small businesses time and money, and keeps new entrepreneurs out,” she said. “We should scrub all of our federal regulations to find responsible ways to make life easier for small businesses, and we should offer incentives to state and local governments to do the same, because that’s where many of the obstacles still lie.”
