Hillary Clinton has scrambled the political picture for the Trans-Pacific Partnership by coming out Wednesday against ratification of a trade initiative she enthusiastically participated in.
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Nevertheless, her reform package draws a marked contrast with the Obama administration’s poor enforcement of financial fraud statutes and its genera acquiescence to big banks on matters of policy.
For Clinton, opposition to TPP is about the potential entry of Joe Biden into the race (who, as vice president, would be hard-pressed to oppose this deal) and undercutting his support among labor unions, who dislike free trade agreements.
Other cave-ins to the Democratic left – her opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, to Arctic oil drilling, to the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership – could hurt as well.
I think it means he’s running.
REUTERS/Brian SnyderU.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton listens during the Boston Community Forum on Substance Abuse ” It’s safe to say that the TPP won’t be ideal – no deal negotiated among a dozen countries ever will be – but its higher standards, if implemented and enforced, should benefit American businesses and workers”, Ms. Clinton wrote in her post-State Department memoir, “Hard Choices”.
It’s also about the threat posed by Bernie Sanders.
But her plan may not go far enough for a few members of the Democratic party, who have been pushing for a law, called Glass-Steagall, that would ban financial institutions from combining their commercial banking operations with riskier investment banking.
“The bar here is very high and, based on what I have seen, I don’t believe the agreement has met it”, Clinton said in a statement issued during a campaign swing through Iowa.
Stories of misconduct in the financial industry are shocking – like HSBC allowing drug cartels to launder money or five major banks pleading guilty to felony charges for conspiring to manipulate currency exchange rates, she said.
Democrats have nearly no chance of securing a majority in the US Senate and even worse odds of securing a majority in the House. They also say the deal champions corporate interests and lobbyist groups.
In a sweeping reform plan set to be released later on Thursday, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will propose pursuing criminal charges against individuals on Wall Street responsible for white collar crime leading up to the 2008 recession.
“As of today, I am not in favour of what I have learned about it”, she told public broadcaster PBS. In opposing global efforts to foster new kinds of trade, and overthrowing years of tortuous negotiations, Clinton, intentionally or not, is sending the message that she thinks the US should no longer lead. “We have to understand the difficulty that President Obama finds himself in because there are laws that impose certain obligations on him“, she said.
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Many of Clinton’s top aides joined her campaign from the White House and the two staffs remain in frequent communication. Obama and Biden have pushed for the trade deal, arguing it would help the United States increase influence in East Asia and counter the rise of China.
