Obama Takes Anti-Worker Criticisms of Trade Deals ‘Personally’

[Purveyor]

Arit John
t aritbenie

President Obama and his agenda get called all sorts of names, but an easy way to strike a nerve is to call his policies "anti-worker."

During a speech on Thursday to Organizing for America—the group that helped campaign for Obama in 2008 and 2012—the president called the Trans-Pacific Partnership the most "progressive" trade agreement in U.S. history and said he takes it "personally" when critics on the left say it will hurt workers.

"[W]hen people say that this trade deal is bad for working families, they don’t know what they’re talking about. I take that personally," Obama said. "My entire presidency has been about helping working families."

“I take that personally.”
President Obama

Obama characterized the Democratic opposition to the trade deal as reflexive, rather than informed. "I’ve got some good friends who are opposed to this trade agreement, but when I ask them specifically what is it that you oppose, they start talking about NAFTA," Obama said, referring to an unpopular free-trade agreement signed under President Clinton. (Both Obama and Hillary Clinton denounced the agreement during the 2008 election.) Obama said that critics "need to tell me what’s wrong with this trade agreement, not one that was passed 25 years ago."

By good friends, Obama likely meant Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has been a vocal opponent of the deal and Trade Promotion Authority, or "fast track," a bill currently being considered by Congress that would allow Obama's trade deals to pass without amendments. Earlier this week Obama said the two have been "allies on a whole host of issues, but she's wrong on this."

more...

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-04-24/obama-takes-anti-worker-criticisms-of-trade-deals-personally-

[upaloopa]

1. Then produce the document. Let critics read it .

Let the experts interpret it for the lay people.
Produce the text!

[99Forever]

2. Our senior legal analyst Norm Goldman....

.. Has offered to professionally analyze the entire document and present his legal findings, free of charge.

President Obama, consider your bluff called.

[hifiguy]

9. Indeed.

Reveal EVERY FUCKING WORD OF TPP NOW or STFU, Mr. President.

[pampango]

11. He is not going to release an unfinished agreement here any more than with the Iranian agreement.

I loved Woodrow Wilson's #1 point in his 14 points.

Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Points

However, the UK and France would not even follow this principle during the WWI peace negotiations and I have not seen any evidence that the world as a whole has proven willing to live by this. In the real world you can't go around releasing everything that everyone is saying in the negotiations unless you want international negotiations to grind to a halt everywhere. I suppose the US or some other important countries could refuse to conduct any more negotiations until Wilson's point was followed. But I'm not sure that Democrats want a world without international negotiations in which disputes are handled by other, less diplomatic, means.

The republicans called for release of information on the Iranian negotiations because they did not trust Obama and they wanted to blow the negotiations up. I am glad that did not happen but they were right (in a warped sort of way) to try that tactic. It would have wrecked the agreement if they could have gotten one side or the other to release the text of the negotiations while they were still ongoing.

Republicans complained about FDR's 'secret tariff agreements' in the campaigns against him in 1936 and 1940. "Secret" trade negotiations are nothing new.

[upaloopa]

12. Then don't complain about the attacks on it.

First it is secret
Then it gets fast tracked
Then no amendments.
We are at the mercy of "trust me"
There is no reason that if this is the most progressive trade agreement, as it is said to be, it needs to follow past patterns of secrecy.

[Faux pas]

3. I take the ruination

of our country personally.

[Fred Sanders]

4. I trust Obama on his true desire to help the middle class. He has earned it. I understand exactly what he is saying.

Those that do not understand do not want to understand and bury their heads in the sands of isolated pockets of disappointment while ignoring all the accomplishments raining down.

[liberal_at_heart]

5. Then by all means, inform us Mr. President. You say we don't know. There may be a reason for that.

Because you won't tell us. So by all means, inform us.

[GeorgeGist]

6. Maybe if he wore more comfortable shoes.

[frylock]

7. weh

[SomethingFishy]

8. Yeah well when the Pentagon "misplaces" billions of my tax dollars

I take that personally. However, the difference is I'm not in a position to do anything about it.

[Eleanors38]

10. He takes it personal. That's why he lashes back personally at progressive Democrats.

[HereSince1628]

13. These treaties have mostly turned out to be on pipe-dreams.

The problem is people have tried these things and find the HOPE isn't warranted that this one will break the pattern.

[PowerToThePeople]

14. why is it so personal?

Does passage of this treaty affect him and his family dirrectly? Is he "on the take?" Statements such as this make me trust him less.

[magical thyme]

15. they start "talking about NAFTA?" Really?

Investor State Dispute Settlement -- giving foreign corporations the right to override our local environmental and labor laws through a foreign tribunal made up of corporate lawyers, socializing their *anticipated* lost profits at *our* expense. With no access by *us* to *their* tribunals to countersue.

"The Trans-Pacific Partnership — a cornerstone of Mr. Obama’s remaining economic agenda — would grant broad powers to multinational companies operating in North America, South America and Asia. Under the accord, still under negotiation but nearing completion, companies and investors would be empowered to challenge regulations, rules, government actions and court rulings — federal, state or local — before tribunals organized under the World Bank or the United Nations."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/business/trans-pacific-partnership-seen-as-door-for-foreign-suits-against-us.html?_r=0

The Trans-Pacific Partnership clause everyone should oppose
Japan, Singapore and seven other countries. Who will benefit from the TPP? American workers? Consumers? Small businesses? Taxpayers? Or the biggest multinational corporations in the world?

One strong hint is buried in the fine print of the closely guarded draft. The provision, an increasingly common feature of trade agreements, is called “Investor-State Dispute Settlement,” or ISDS. The name may sound mild, but don’t be fooled. Agreeing to ISDS in this enormous new treaty would tilt the playing field in the United States further in favor of big multinational corporations.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kill-the-dispute-settlement-language-in-the-trans-pacific-partnership/2015/02/25/ec7705a2-bd1e-11e4-b274-e5209a3bc9a9_story.html