Democrats opposed to President Obama’s fourth-quarter trade agenda have accused the president of abandoning the liberal ideals he embodied during his first run for the White House.
But the administration and pro-trade Democrats say that’s the wrong way to look at it. Instead, they say Obama is advancing the liberal agenda by trying to undo damage caused by earlier deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement, which progressive lawmakers and their allies have decried ever since it was signed by President Clinton.
When Obama was campaigning for president, he said that he wanted to renegotiate NAFTA “and that’s exactly what he’s doing,” said Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., the leader of the New Democrats. Kind pointed out that Mexico and Canada are parties to the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership under negotiation, and that as a result, the TPP will give the U.S. a chance to update its trade relationship with those two countries.
“This is him living up to that promise to the American people. Very seldom do you get a do-over” in areas such as this, but that is what Obama is doing with the TPP, Kind said.
This is “the most progressive trade promotion authority bill that the Congress has ever considered and has ever been passed by the United States Senate,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said last week. “It includes built-in protections related to raising labor standards and raising environmental standards; it includes important human rights protections.”
“[W]e can implement trade agreements that will level the playing field, put upward pressure … in a way that will open up opportunity for American workers and American businesses around the world, and that ultimately will have a positive impact on the U.S. economy and on job creation right here in the United States,” he added.
Job loss, factories moving overseas, lower wages and environmental standards abroad, and poor human rights records in developing countries are the main factors liberals like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., cite as reasons they cannot support Obama’s trade agenda. But Kind said those critics fundamentally don’t understand what Obama is doing with both the pending TPP and the EU-wide Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.
“If we want a trade agreement based on our rules, and not, say, China’s, this is the process that gets us there,” Kind said about why he’s one of 16 House Democrats willing to grant Obama and future presidents trade promotion, or fast track, authority. “What people are upset about is the status quo. We need to level the playing field,” which can only be done through TPA, TPP and TTIP, he explained.
The U.S. is running a trade surplus in sectors vital to Wisconsin and many Democratic-held districts, such as agriculture and manufacturing, with the 18 countries that have entered into a bilateral trade deal with the U.S., Kind said. The “race to the bottom” in terms of labor, environmental and human rights standards are in countries with which the U.S. has no agreement, he countered. Members of Congress who oppose Obama’s trade agenda on those grounds “have it kind of backwards,” he said. “We want [other nations] to elevate their standards.”
Obama acknowledged the flack he’s getting from liberals in a recent speech at Nike’s Eugene, Ore., headquarters.
“On every progressive issue, they’re right there with me,” he said last month. “And then on this one they’re like whooping on me.”
Rep. Mark Pocan, a sophomore whom Democratic leadership tapped as a freshman to help lead outreach to labor interests, was gentler in his opposition.
“I truly believe that the White House feels this is good for geopolitical reasons,” he said. But he said like many of his colleagues, when he looks at his district, he doesn’t see potential benefits.
Pocan read the draft TPP chapters on labor, environment and human rights. “I would argue there is some marginally better language in the labor chapter and weaker in the environmental chapter,” he said. “But the bottom line is, both lack meaningful enforcement” mechanisms. “They don’t have teeth.”
Kind said Pocan and others should trust the head of their party to strike better deals for the country than his predecessors.
“I am a little surprised that more Democrats are not embracing this progressive trade agenda,” Kind said. “This is our president; we should have a modicum of trust in him to go out and negotiate” good agreements.
