Why Is President Obama Having So Much Trouble Selling TPP?

[jeff47]

22. Because he's lying about why it should be passed.

Add up all the GDP of the countries in the TPP. We already have free trade agreements with the countries that make up 80% of that GDP. Japan is another 12%, but their tariff is only 1.2% on US goods - trivial, and not a significant trade barrier.

So we don't need the TPP to "open these markets". Those markets are already wide open.

The wealthy want the TPP because it reduces risk to capital. Right now, if you buy a strip mine in some of the TPP countries, a new environmental law could close the mine and wipe out your investment. The TPP lets you "sue" the country with the new law and recover not only your investment, but your expected profits.

It means there's no way US capital can lose in these investments. It also means capital leaving the US instead of investing in our "safe" economy. So that angle isn't going to work to "sell" the treaty.

Obama and some others believe that the labor and environmental protections would be a large improvement over the status quo in sweatshop countries. But that isn't going to work to "sell" the treaty either. The costs to US workers are way too high, and people will ask for good-old trade barriers instead - pile up a hefty tariff unless they have those labor and environmental protections.

So that leaves lying as the only way to "sell" the treaty to the public.