President Obama Bullying on the Trans-Pacific Partnership

Dear Friends,

Last week President Obama traveled to Nike headquarters to make his case for the Trans-Pacific Partnership and to try to bully members of his own party who oppose the TPP. See here and here.

There are so many things wrong with President Obama's approach it is hard to know where to start.  Let's start with giving the speech at Nike headquarters.  Nike clearly states that it is not a manufacturing company, it is a marketing and distribution company.  About 1% of its products is made in the USA.  Nike has always and continues to search for manufacturers in countries where working conditions are deplorable and wages are unconscionably low.  It moves from country to country to keep the manufacturing of its products in countries where there are no workers' rights.  President Obama claims that TPP would bring manufacturing jobs to the United States and cites a statement by the Nike CEO that it is possible that perhaps maybe if everything lines up just right that it might be possible for Nike to consider some special manufacturing that could possibly provide up to 10,000 jobs over the next decade.  How lame is that??  Nike products are currently made by almost 1,000,000 workers around the world.

After his speech in which he gives no facts and makes no substantive arguments supporting his assertion that TPP is the most progressive trade deal ever, he restarted his campaign to bully members of his own party who object to giving him fast track authority for TPP.  He may be telling the truth that it is the most progressive trade deal ever, but that is an extremely low standard and could simply mean that it will cost us fewer high paying manufacturing jobs than prior trade agreements.  Since prior trade deals have already cost us most of our good paying manufacturing jobs, there just are not that many manufacturing jobs to lose.

His argument is basically one of trust me.  He says that he has run in his last election, so what incentive would he have to enter into a deal that was bad for the American worker.  That is his only argument.  He says those opposed to TPP are just plain wrong.  He says that Senator Warren and others opposed to TPP are just spinning out hypotheticals, which is all they are legally permitted to do since they cannot disclose what they have read.  Yet he offers no specifics either about how they are wrong or about why he is right.  Of course since he has denied the American people the right to know what is in the drafts and what he is proposing, it is makes sense that his only argument is trust me.  But how can we trust him when big money and big corporations are his only advisors on the deal?  I do not know why he is so enamored with TPP, but I know that I do not trust him.

The Huffington Post published an editorial entitled "TPP: Obama's Folly" (here).  Their conclusion about why he is pushing so hard on TPP:

We cannot read the President's mind. But this unholy alliance with Republicans and their outsourcing corporate clients smells like a desperate effort to add something, anything, to his rather thin two-term legacy. 

Robert Reich wrote a great article entitled "Nike, Obama, and the Fiasco of the Trans Pacific Partnership" (here). It is a great summary of the some of the major problems with TPP.

The Trans Pacific Trade Partnership’s investor protections will make it safer for firms to relocate abroad – the Cato Institute describes such protections as “lowering the risk premium” on offshoring – thereby reducing corporate incentives to keep jobs in America and upgrade the skills of Americans.
Those same investor protections will allow global corporations to sue the United States or any other country that raises its health, safety, environmental, or labor standards, for any lost profits due to those standards.
But there’s nothing in the deal to protect the incomes of Americans.

Write your Congressional representatives and tell them to oppose TPP.  Two of my representatives, Representative Ellison and Senator Franken are vigorously opposing TPP.  Senator Klobuchar on the other hand has been quiet on the subject.  I cannot imagine why.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal