Well, that was quick. Contrary to Ruth Marcus’s prediction which I commented on earlier, Hillary Clinton has come out against the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement with alacrity:
Just days after the U.S. and 11 nations released a monumental trade deal that still faces a fight in Congress, Hillary Clinton says she does not support the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Speaking with Judy Woodruff Wednesday, the Democratic presidential candidate said that as of today, given what she knows of the deal, it does not meet her bar for creating jobs, raising wages for Americans and advancing national security.
Speaking at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, as part of a two-day swing through the leadoff caucus state, Clinton said that she’s worried “about currency manipulation not being part of the agreement†and that “pharmaceutical companies may have gotten more benefits and patients fewer.â€
“As of today, I am not in favor of what I have learned about it,†Clinton said, later adding, “I don’t believe it’s going to meet the high bar I have set.â€
If you recall Ms. Marcus made two predictions: that Hillary Clinton would drag her decision out but that she would ultimately oppose the deal. She got the opposition to the deal right but the timing wrong.
Presumably, Sec. Clinton has a better notion of what’s in the agreement than you, I, or the average senator hanging around the street corner. Her opposition is going to make it much easier for Democrats to vote against it. Who are they going to aggravate? The sitting president or (possibly) the next president? I won’t go quite as far as to say that she’s driven a nail into the TPP’s coffin but it’s the next thing to it. I suspect that if it passes at all it will be on the basis of Republican votes. The question now is just how committed corporatist Republicans are to the deal.
What to do, what to do? Approve the deal on its merits (whatever they are) or give the president a poke in the eye? Maybe the Congressional leadership can figure out a way to do both.
I wonder if there is a Biden angle here. Theory One: She believes Biden is entering the race and is going to force Biden to take the less popular Administration decisions. Theory Two: She is uncertain whether Biden is entering the race and is trying to dissuade him by communicating that he will forced to defend the Administration’s less popular decisions.
Theory One > Theory Two because under Theory Two she could still signal the threat while retaining strategic ambiguity on her position. Though to some extent her condemnation is equivocal.
Third alternative: She believe Biden is entering the race and is pre-emptively making news with whatever was lying around to have a story other than Clinton’s apparent weakness coaxed Biden into the race.
Fourth alternative: She is uncertain whether Biden is entering the race, but she has to be more proactive in reducing Sanders base of support, otherwise her numbers will make Biden’s entry inevitable.
Four actually seems pretty good.
The question now is just how committed corporatist Republicans are to the deal.
The Republicans showed after the last mid-term that they will do whatever their corporate masters tell them.
PD’s theories are all pretty good, but I’m not sure Hillary or her people are one-the-ball enough to have reasoned things out as clearly as he has.
“Yet, previously as secretary of state, Clinton called the Trans-Pacific Partnership the “gold standard in trade agreements.†In her second memoir, Hard Choices, released in 2014, Clinton lauded the deal, saying it “would link markets throughout Asia and the Americas, lowering trade barriers while raising standards on labor, the environment, and intellectual property.†She even said it was “important for American workers, who would benefit from competing on a more level playing field.†She also called it “a strategic initiative that would strengthen the position of the United States in Asia.†”
Golly. She does a lot of evolving.
I think that Hillary Clinton has exactly one closely-held, committed political position and that’s about women’s rights. Every other published opinion is purely instrumental—either tactical or strategic.
Yet the OTB commentariat pretends not to understand why some Democrats aren’t totally enthusiastic for Hilldawg.
The thing about being a yaller dog Democrat is that you don’t realize you’re a yaller dog Democrat.
I can give any number of reasons I don’t want her as president. She’s corporatist to the bone. Worse than simply corporatist. She’s a Vailist. Like Theodore Vail she believes that competition is inefficient. She’s all about the very biggest companies, the biggest banks, the biggest institutions of all kinds.
That’s a view that had some credibility in 1960 but today it’s insane.
I think that Hillary Clinton has exactly one closely-held, committed political position and that’s about women’s rights.
Kathleen Willey, amongst others, disagrees. 😉
She just remembered she is running for the Democratic nomination. If nominated, and it polls well, she will like the deal again.
Steve
I am I wrong in thinking her State Department was involved in negotiating this agreement? How can she not know what’s in it?
As I wrote in the body of the post, yes, the agreement was initiated during her tenure at State so she can be expected to know more about it than most. However, she does have plausible deniability for two reasons. First, there have undoubtedly been changes since she left State. Second, she probably wasn’t paying much attention to specifics. In Clintonland that will pass for “plausible”.