AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka heatedly disputed a claim made Tuesday evening by Gov. Terry McAuliffe that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will flip-flop on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. Trumka, leader of the nation’s largest labor federation, said he was certain that Clinton would continue to oppose the deal.
“Terry McAuliffe is absolutely wrong. He should listen more closely to our candidate, just as Hillary has listened closely to America’s workers. Hillary Clinton opposes TPP, period. There is no daylight between her and America’s working families. All of organized labor and all American workers have set a standard, she has embraced it, and she’ll stick to it,” Trumka said in a statement late Tuesday.
McAuliffe, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a longtime member of the Clinton family’s inner circle, said Tuesday that Clinton would likely support a revised version of the trade deal, reversing a position she took last year during a heated Democratic primary battle with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
“I worry that if we don’t do TPP, at some point China’s going to break the rules, but Hillary understands this,” McAuliffe told Politico at the Democratic National Convention. “Once the election’s over, and we sit down on trade, people understand a couple things we want to fix on it but going forward we got to build a global economy,” McAuliffe said. This was especially likely if the Democrats retook the Senate in November, he said.
The Clinton campaign called his remarks “flat wrong” but the incident nevertheless roiled the convention.
The controversy comes as labor leaders are trying prevent dissent within the union rank and file who would have preferred Sanders as the candidate. Labor leaders are also trying to quell union support for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who staunchly opposes TPP. McAuliffe’s comments threaten to undo those efforts.
TPP would lower tariffs and economic barriers between 12 Pacific rim nations. China is not included in the deal. The trade deal has been championed by President Obama who argues, like McAuliffe, that without it China will be free to economically dominate the region.
Organized labor and numerous liberal groups, usually allies of the administration, staunchly oppose it and say it would hurt domestic businesses and speed up the outsourcing of jobs. That has made the deal a touchy subject for the administration and for Clinton especially.
She was involved in the negotiations for it as Obama’s secretary of state. In addition, many labor activists still blame Bill Clinton for job losses in 1990s after he signed the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993.
When she appeared before the AFL-CIO’s executive board last summer to secure it endorsement, the members pressed her to oppose TPP but she took no position. Sanders, who was pitching himself aggressively to labor unions, vowed to block the deal. The AFL-CIO held off on making an endorsement at the time.
Clinton subsequently came out against the trade deal in October, arguing that its terms were so bad she had no choice. The announcement came after Clinton found herself in an unexpectedly tough primary battle Sanders.
“I did say when I was secretary of state that I hoped the trade deal would be ‘the gold standard,'” Clinton told CNN at the time. That was before the deal was actually concluded, she noted. After reading text, “I concluded that I could not,” she said.
Labor leaders applauded the announcement. “Her decision is a critical turning point, and will be invaluable in our effort to defeat TPP,” Trumka said.
However, labor leaders were not able to secure language in the official 2016 Democratic Party Platform opposing TPP. Instead, the platform contains tough language on trade generally, warning that, “Over the past three decades, America has signed too many trade deals that have not lived up to the hype.” It then lists a number of pro-labor requirements trade must meet and says TPP must meet them.
Tellingly, though, it doesn’t say whether TPP meets those standards, even though negotiations on the deal have been concluded and further amendment of the deal is not possible. The platform, therefore, leaves open the possibility that TPP could pass.
Labor leaders tried to put a good spin on it. The Teamsters announced that the platform “includes language that is close to an outright rejection” and vowed to “continue to point out TPP’s fundamental flaws and mobilize to defeat it.”
