Why President Obama is pushing the TPP.

[yallerdawg]

Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Lee of Singapore in Joint Press Conference

Q Thank you, Mr. President. You're here today touting the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but Hillary Clinton is against it. Her vice presidential nominee, Tim Kaine, has now reversed himself and is now against it. Donald Trump is, too, meaning that the next President is opposed to this deal. So my question is, if you take both candidates at their word, how do you plan to get Congress to pass this deal during the lame duck, and what’s your plan to convince members to do so given the opposition I just described?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, right now, I'm President, and I'm for it. And I think I've got the better argument. And I've made this argument before; I'll make it again. We are part of a global economy. We're not reversing that. It can't be reversed, because it is driven by technology, and it is driven by travel and cargo containers, and the fact that the demand for products inside of our country means we've got to get some things from other places, and our export sector is a huge contributor to jobs and our economic wellbeing. Most manufactured products now involve a global supply chain where parts are made in all corners of the globe, and converge and then get assembled and packaged and sold. And so the notion that we're going to pull that up root and branch is unrealistic. Point number one.

Point number two. It is absolutely true, the evidence shows that some past trade deals have not delivered on all the benefits that were promised and had very localized costs. There were communities that were hurt because plants moved out. People lost jobs. Jobs were created because of those trade deals, but jobs were also lost. And people who experienced those losses, those communities didn't get as much help as they needed to.

And what is also true as a consequence of globalization and automation, what you've seen is labor, workers losing leverage and capital being mobile, being able to locate around the world. That has all contributed to growing inequality both here in the United States, but in many advanced economies. So there’s a real problem, but the answer is not cutting off globalization. The answer is, how do we make sure that globalization, technology, automation -- those things work for us, not against us. And TPP is designed to do precisely that.

Number one, it knocks out 18,000 tariffs that other countries place on American products and goods. Our economy currently has fewer tariffs, is more open than many of our trading partners. So if everybody agrees that we're going to have lower tariffs, that's good for American businesses and American workers. And we should want that, we should pursue it.

Number two, the complaint about previous trade deals was that labor agreements and environmental agreements sounded good, but they weren’t enforceable the same way you could complain about tariffs and actually get action to ensure that tariffs were not enforced. Well, TPP actually strengthens labor agreements and environmental agreements. And they are just as enforceable as any other part of the agreement. In fact, people take them so seriously that right now, for example, Vietnam is drafting and presenting unprecedented labor reforms in Vietnam, changing their constitution to recognize worker organizations in Vietnam for the first time.

So what we're doing is we're raising standards for workers in those countries, which means it’s harder for them to undercut labor standards here in the United States. The same is true for environmental standards. The same is true for things like human trafficking, where we’ve got a country like Malaysia taking really serious efforts to crack down on human trafficking. Why? Because TPP says you need to. It gives us leverage to promote things that progressives and people here in this country, including labor unions, say they care about.

So if you care about preventing abuse of workers, child labor, wildlife trafficking, overfishing, the decimation of forests, all those things are addressed in this agreement. I have not yet heard anybody make an argument that the existing trading rules are better for issues like labor rights and environmental rights than they would be if we got TPP passed.

And so I’m going to continue to make this case. And I’ve got some very close friends, people I admire a lot, but who I just disagree with them. And that’s okay. I respect the arguments that they’re making. They’re coming from a sincere concern about the position or workers and wages in this country. But I think I’ve got the better argument, and I’ve got the evidence to support it.

And hopefully, after the election is over and the dust settles, there will be more attention to the actual facts behind the deal and it won’t just be a political symbol or a political football. And I will actually sit down with people on both sides, on the right and on the left. I’ll sit down publicly with them and we’ll go through the whole provisions. I would enjoy that, because there’s a lot of misinformation.

I’m really confident I can make the case this is good for American workers and the American people. And people said we weren’t going to be able to get the trade authority to even present this before Congress, and somehow we muddled through and got it done. And I intend to do the same with respect to the actual agreement.

[True Dough]

1. Thanks for posting this

I trust Obama. I think he has the genuine welfare of the nation at heart while also looking at how the TPP could improve things overseas too.

That doesn't mean the deal should be rubber stamped as drafted. Others with trade expertise could see ways to strengthen this agreement before it goes into effect. Hopefully there is a great deal of oversight before it is passed (if it is passed).

[kacekwl]

2. It's great to trust President Obama

but do you trust Vietnam to enforce the labor and human rights reforms or any other country for that matter. Also too much legal nonsense to wade through. Time the U S economy and workers come out on top .

[Coolest Ranger]

3. I remind you kacekwl

this is the Barrack Obama group. We trust him that's why the OP posted this. Bash the TPP in general discussion

[MBS]

4. Here is a good piece by Fareed Zakaria:

I'm totally behind Obama on this.
Zakaria makes a strong, sensible argument for Obama and the TPP:


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/barack-obama-is-now-alone-in-washington/2016/09/01/4d2e1348-7080-11e6-9705-23e51a2f424d_story.html?

. . . The Pacific will be the arena that defines the 21st century. According to the World Bank, in just 10 years, four of the five largest economies in the world will be in the Asia-Pacific region. The United States will be able to shape the 21st century only if it remains a vital Pacific power. How should Washington approach this region? One central task is obviously to prevent China from dominating it. . . The Obama administration has also enhanced security cooperation with a range of traditional allies such as Japan, Australia and Singapore.

But Washington’s policy is not containment. It can’t be. China is not the Soviet Union but rather the most important trading partner for every country in Asia. The larger project, writes Kurt Campbell, who was until 2013 the State Department’s top Asia hand, in his smart book “The Pivot,” is “to strengthen Asia’s operating system — that is, the complex legal, security and practical arrangements that have underscored four decades of Asian prosperity and security.” That means bolstering freedom of navigation, free trade, multilateral groups and institutions, transparency and accountability, and such diplomatic practices as peaceful resolution of disputes. The most vital of these right now, Campbell notes, is trade. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is the sine qua non of Washington’s pivot to Asia because it works at many levels simultaneously — economic, political and strategic. It boosts growth, shores up U.S. alliances, sends a powerful signal to China and, most importantly, writes the rules of the 21st century in ways that are fundamentally American. Without it, expect China to begin drafting those rules in ways that will be very different.

And yet the TPP is under assault from every quarter in the United States. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Donald Trump flatly oppose it. Hillary Clinton and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) have said that it doesn’t meet their standards anymore. What these standards are, they haven’t specified. Harvard’s Robert Lawrence has noted that for workers, the TPP’s gains far outweigh its losses.
The notion, often peddled by Trump, that the United States comes out badly in trade deals can be asserted only by someone who knows nothing about the topic. The simple reality is that the United States is the country with the largest market. As a result, it has the most leverage and — as foreign officials have often complained to me — it uses it, asking for exemptions and exceptions that few other countries get. The TPP is no different. Asian countries have made most of the concessions. And because their markets are more closed than the United States’, the deal’s net result will be to open them more. . . .

[yallerdawg]

5. Good article!

Nothing but respect for President Obama:

With the Asia pivot, Obama is pursuing the deepest, most enduring interests of the United States. But in doing so, he is now alone in a Washington that is increasingly awash in populism, protectionism and isolationism.