Author: s.zerpa

Regardless of the logic behind free-trade agreements; they seem to be out of style along with almost everything else from the 1990’s. A candidate’s position or history with free-trade has become one of the weapons being used during the 2016 election year. From Ohio’s Senate race where “As he campaigns in Ohio, Mr. Portman, 60, spares no occasion to raise the threat of opioid abuse, a signature issue that establishes him as his own man, while fending off his opponent’s most dangerous attack: his long history as a free-trade supporter, putting him at odds with Mr. Trump’s base…Mr. Strickland, his opponent, wants voters to hear more about Mr. Portman’s stint as the country’s top trade negotiator under President George W. Bush. ‘The Best Senator China Ever Had’ “. To North Carolina where “U.S. Sen. Richard Burr is criticizing his Democratic challenger, Deborah Ross, saying she has failed to make clear her position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership – a trade deal that critics say could add hurt North Carolina communities already damaged by the North American Free Trade Agreement”.

Therein lies the key, NAFTA. Even in towns once solidly Democratic due to their blue-collar nature, Democrats are losing ground. It is these non-deplorables that Hillary Clinton must connect with. They need to hear that she is going to fight for them. As Sean Posey noted in a recent article posted to Moyers and Company; “After years of watching manufacturing jobs hemorrhage from the area in the wake of plant closures, voters witnessed the 1993 signing of NAFTA, originally a vision of Republican Ronald Reagan, under President Bill Clinton… According to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, Ohio suffered some of the highest jobs losses of any state as a result of NAFTA. A recent report by EPI also states that America lost 2 million jobs in 2015 due to trade deficits with nations in the Trans-Pacific Partnership”. Hillary needs to stop playing Trump’s games. Those are his games, he made the rules and he will always win. You cannot out-crazy crazy. The voters that are supporting her already know that a large number of Trump supporters are deplorable; they do not need to be persuaded. The “deplorable” Trump supporters know they are deplorable, but feel justified; those supporters will never be persuaded. It is the “other basket” she must address in order to assuage their fears and for some, their pain. She needs to begin by addressing the economy and the inequalities within it. She needs to address the issues that preoccupy our minds. I worry about my future and that of my daughter, but it seems that neither candidate does.

The DNC should have learned something from Sanders. As Albert R. Hunt noted in The New York Times, “the public has moved closer to his view on economic fairness”. It is this sense that the economy and free-trade are unfair to the average person and only benefit the elites that both Bernie Sanders and Trump tapped into. “Bob Kish, a political communications veteran and president of Third Wave Communications, said both candidates have been able to turn feelings of economic hardship into political capital.’I think what both Trump and Bernie are tapping into is this anger, this frustration, this economic stagnation,’ Kish said”. If Democrats are to take the Senate and Hillary the Presidency, the both have two months to be heard so they better begin talking about the things that the disenfranchised are not hearing.

The TPP trades off some U.S. protections and sovereignty to a foreign court sytem created under the agreement named an investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). It’s not unusual for trade agreements to cede some sovereignty for the purpose of involving neutral parties. The TPP, however, seems to cede too much power to ISDS for some usual supporters of free-trade to support it. This was demostrated this Wednesday when “a group of academics who have traditionally embraced free trade, but who are alarmed by the inclusion of ISDS in the TPP. The group, 223 strong and led by Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, warned that the U.S. will become subject to a flurry of suits by profit-seeking actors with no interest in working through a democratic or constitutional process.”  For others that opposed the agreement it is a combination of this same court system and a new strict set of rules that govern intellectual property and freedom of information. The potential pitfalls in the agreement are real with serious economic implications. The question now becomes, is this enough to kill the agreement?

“… and when the flashpoints of today have passed, the rise of Asia will remain the dominant trend of our time. In just 10 years, according to the world bank, four of the five largest economies of the world will be in the Asia-Pacific” The most important part of America’s attempt at containing a resurgent  China according to Kurt Campbell, the State Department’s former top Asia man, is “Trade. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is the sine qua non of Washington’s pivot to Asia… It writes the rules of the 21st century in ways that are fundamentally pro-America.” Fareed Zakaria notes that otherwise, it will be China writing the rules.

For many labor unions,  defeating the TPP and electing politicians sworn to oppose it is the paramount objective of this election cycle. The TPP has also alienated individuals that are normally allies of free trade. The TPP is a flawed agreement at best with few outspoken supporters outside of the administration and some big business interests. So why is Obama still pushing hard for this agreement? The TPP is part of a much bigger strategy to deal with a resurgent China. The Obama administration recognizes that Isis and terrorism are not existential threats to the U.S., but that the growing influence of China with the second largest economy in the world could be. The president is not alone in this idea. The former head of the CIA and NSA, general Michael Hayden, agrees with this view. He believes that the preoccupation with terrorism has blinded the U.S. to a potential future threat. The facts are that China has been increasing it’s diplomatic activities within neighboring regions.  China has also begun to increase its military spending to boost its ability to project its military power. With every move, China has grown more confident as they demonstrated when they created artificial islands in the South China Sea for the purpose of expanding its territorial claims into international waters and airspace.  The concerns over China’s expanding influence go back before the formal discussion of TPP agreement began in 2010. During testimony before U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in March 18, 2008, concerns were raised over Chinese diplomatic moves and increased trade with potential allies. They fear that increased economic and diplomatic ties could weaken America’s influence in key parts of the world. For a detail look at the testimony go here. Later this week, look to see if there are any important developments on the TPP as Obama returns from visiting Asian countries after what was a tense and unusual G20 meeting in China. Obama strongly believes that the best way to check Chinese power and influence is through stronger economic ties between the U.S. and China’s neighbors. Is he right? Should we support flawed trade agreement for the sake of security and future American influence in the world? Do we have time to renegotiate the agreement before China cements its hold in the region? Obama doesn’t seem to think so.

In my previous post, I brought up the fact that most Americans do not know or understand the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. For those wishing to hear from those affected to those with an opinion, here is a list of websites with information and opinions:

TPP Full Text

Office of the United States Trade Representative

U.S. Department of Commerce

U.S. House of Representatives The Committee on Ways and Means

U.S. Senate Committee on Finance

The Brookings Institution

Economic Policy Institute

Cato Institute

Peterson Institute for International Economics

U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Public Citizens

AFL-CIO

Communications Workers of America

International Brotherhood of Teamsters

Hillary Clinton Campaign

Democrats Party Policy

Donald Trump Campaign

Republican Party

Enjoy the many sources of facts and opinions.

The 2016 election cycle has seen few if any instances where the Republican and the Democratic parties agree on anything. In fact, their policy positions and views of America are so different that Time magazine published a piece after the party conventions titled In Two Clashing Conventions, a Clear Choice for the Nation. In the piece author Alex Altman characterized the difference between the two views by noting that “for four days in Cleveland, Republicans painted images of a country beset by crime, besieged by violent visitors and led by political elites who are either too stupid or corrupt to diagnose the problem.” He went on to say that the Democratic party “…responded to Trump’s despair with defiance. ‘We do not scare easily,’ Vice President Joe Biden declared in one of the week’s best speeches. ‘We never bow, we never bend, we never break when confronted with crisis. No, we endure, we overcome and we always, always, always move forward.'” The point is not that that one side is right and the other is wrong; it is the fact that there seems to be a substantial difference in worldviews between the parties.

The partisan divide is so wide that research by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center concluded that “the 2016 campaign is unfolding against a backdrop of intense partisan division and animosity…For the first time in surveys dating to 1992, majorities in both parties express not just unfavorable but very unfavorable views of the other party. And today, sizable shares of both Democrats and Republicans say the other party stirs feelings of not just frustration, but fear and anger.” This is precisely why it’s hard to believe that the parties have found an issue to rally around, but they have. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement, a 12 nation free trade agreement, has provided the very issue that both parties seem to be unified in defeating. Just this last Friday Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., praised Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., for promising to not let the agreement move forward for a vote during the “lame duck” session of Congress following the November election. If McConnell holds to his word, it could mean the death of this agreement. So why has this agreement engendered so much hate and cooperation from the usual rivals? The truth is that I’m not sure since most Americans are not aware of what is in the agreement, to begin with. As I began to have conversations about the agreement with many around me, I found that most believe the agreement is still a secret. I also found that despite the lack of knowledge about the agreement, most seem to believe it’s a bad one. So what is the TPP?

The 12 nations making up the free-trade zone are the United States, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, Canada, Mexico, and Japan. The agreement aims to eliminate many of the taxes, fees, embargoes, tariffs, and subsidies that currently exist on American goods entering some of those 12 nations and vice versa. The Obama administration hopes that the agreement will boost trade and create the kind of favorable economic conditions which can jumpstart the struggling American manufacturing sector. There is a sense that much of the negative press that the agreement has received over the last year has been due to the fact that the negotiations were conducted in complete secrecy. But, as President Obama promised a year ago, the full text of the agreement and the government’s assessment of its benefits can now be read in its entirety. To do so one just has to visit any of the following websites.

TPP Full Text

TPP Issue-by-Issue Information Center

USITC Releases Report Concerning the Likely Impact of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement

It is important to understand what the agreement is, who it impacts, and how before we begin discussing whether or not it is a positive or negative agreement.

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