It got me wondering whether I should reconsider my support for TPP and even trade promotion authority.
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“As of today, I am not in favour of what I have learned about it”, she told public broadcaster PBS in an interview.
Indeed, timing is as important as the substance.
The Obama administration this week said it had identified an exchange between Clinton and former Army Gen. David Petraeus from January 2009 that her team had not previously provided to the State Department.
After months of hinting she might oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Hillary Clinton made it official this week.
Here’s my less-than-optimistic case for quick support. For example, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative, the agreement eventually would eliminate more than 18,000 tariffs on imports of goods from the United States into the 11 other participating countries.
Clinton’s main challenger, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders gains ground on the faltering front-runner. Clinton believes banks are already structuring their operations to avoid it, and she would push to enforce its “underlying goals”, her campaign said. More than nearly anyone else around, she knows where the levers of power lie, and she is comfortable pulling them, procedural niceties be damned.
At a few point, has Clinton not earned enough leeway and goodwill to break with the base?
The landmark trade deal involves 12 countries along the Pacific rim, including the U.S. and Japan. She promised that “better jobs with higher wages and safer working conditions, including for women, migrant workers and others too often in the past excluded from the formal economy will help build Asia’s middle class and rebalance the global economy”. But there is something to be said for not looking like a craven, desperate flip-flopper.
In her post-administration book Hard Choices, she called the agreement an important tool for engaging with Vietnam and for protecting higher standards for American businesses and workers. She poked fun at this tendency on “Saturday Night Live”, referring to her dithering on the Keystone pipeline and same-sex marriage. Many of Clinton’s top aides joined her campaign from the White House and the two staffs remain in frequent communication. “What’s important is getting it right”.
She’s showing off that gift, wants everybody to see it because for so long the Clintons have been trying to argue that this Benghazi investigation and the e-mail investigation that grew out of it was politically motivated. But, as the ad demonstrates, Clinton thinks she’ll now have the upper hand at her October.
Congress will have several months to examine the deal – which lawmakers can’t amend or filibuster – before taking votes sometime early next year.
History suggests she will duck.
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Clinton’s once-commanding lead in polls of Democratic voters has diminished amid a lingering controversy about her use of a private e-mail server when she was secretary of state, giving rise to speculation that Biden could enter the race.
