Trans Pacific Partnership

[The Feral Slasher]

After years and years in the background, it seems like the TPP is getting lots of press lately. Any liberals/Democrats in the pen who are in favor of the bill ? Nearly everything I read about it is highly critical of the contents and the way the administration has handled it. One example below.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/27/house-trade-trafficking_n_7446078.html

Dean Baker, a liberal economist critical of the trade deal, said the debate over slavery brings into relief just how badly the administration wants TPP. "The slavery story just speaks volumes about what is important and what isn't," he said. "We are prepared to go to the mat for stronger patent and copyright protections, but we don't want prohibitions on slavery to impede the advancement of a trade deal."

[DMT]

After years and years in the background, it seems like the TPP is getting lots of press lately. Any liberals/Democrats in the pen who are in favor of the bill ? Nearly everything I read about it is highly critical of the contents and the way the administration has handled it. One example below.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/27/house-trade-trafficking_n_7446078.html

Dean Baker, a liberal economist critical of the trade deal, said the debate over slavery brings into relief just how badly the administration wants TPP. "The slavery story just speaks volumes about what is important and what isn't," he said. "We are prepared to go to the mat for stronger patent and copyright protections, but we don't want prohibitions on slavery to impede the advancement of a trade deal."

Crickets.

[onejayhawk]

Bipartisanship is not notice worthy.

J

[nots]

NAFTA worked so well, can't imagine why this wouldn't too.

[Hi.I'm.Mandy]

Bipartisanship is not notice worthy.

J

Kinda like this post. Toodles !

[GwynnInTheHall]

NAFTA worked so well, can't imagine why this wouldn't too.

Exactly my thoughts. Congress no longer represents the people, maybe that's why they made corporations people too so they could get by on a technicality...........

[onejayhawk]

NAFTA worked so well, can't imagine why this wouldn't too.

That problem is that NAFTA did work well, so the irony doesn't work.

http://www.economist.com/node/2312920

That does not make it popular.

J

[GwynnInTheHall]

That problem is that NAFTA did work well, so the irony doesn't work.

http://www.economist.com/node/2312920

That does not make it popular.

J

If you only count the profit's it made for Corporations then yes, but to say it worked in the broaders sense is just incorrect.

[nots]

Ross Perot absolutely nailed it. 'That giant sucking noise you hear will be jobs leaving the country'......
Not sure how anyone can argue it was good for the country as a whole. I imagine this trade deal will have the same effect.
Seems really odd that this is the issue the President chooses to agree with the GOP on.

[The Feral Slasher]

Ross Perot absolutely nailed it. 'That giant sucking noise you hear will be jobs leaving the country'......
Not sure how anyone can argue it was good for the country as a whole. I imagine this trade deal will have the same effect.
Seems really odd that this is the issue the President chooses to agree with the GOP on.

It appears to me that TPP is designed to benefit large corporations, and Obama has always been friendly to banks and other corporations as far as I can tell. Seems entirely in character from my perspective.

[GwynnInTheHall]

Ross Perot absolutely nailed it. 'That giant sucking noise you hear will be jobs leaving the country'......
Not sure how anyone can argue it was good for the country as a whole. I imagine this trade deal will have the same effect.
Seems really odd that this is the issue the President chooses to agree with the GOP on.

because in the end most politicians are in bed with big business?

[Steve]

because in the end most politicians are in bed with somebody?

fixed.

[onejayhawk]

If you only count the profit's it made for Corporations then yes, but to say it worked in the broaders sense is just incorrect.

From the article

Yes, it worked
So far as its economic effects are concerned, the right question to ask of NAFTA is simply whether it indeed succeeded in stimulating trade and investment. The answer is clear: it did....Why then is the agreement so widely regarded by non-economists as a failure? The answer lies partly in the interplay of politics and economics, and accordingly is different in each of the member countries. But one theme is common to all three: a tendency to blame NAFTA in particular, and international integration in general, for every economic disappointment of the past ten years, however tenuous the connection may be.

Debate in the United States has been preoccupied by fears over loss of jobs—by the “giant sucking sound” of work moving south, in Ross Perot's phrase from the early 1990s. A variety of estimates of NAFTA's direct effect on American labour have been made—with job losses running as high, according to one disputed study, as 110,000 a year between 1994 and 2000. But, as already noted, direct losses do not tell the whole story: changing the pattern of employment is after all one of the reasons for promoting trade. So long as lost jobs are balanced by new ones, the overall effect on employment will be small.

J

[GwynnInTheHall]

From the article

Yes, it worked
So far as its economic effects are concerned, the right question to ask of NAFTA is simply whether it indeed succeeded in stimulating trade and investment. The answer is clear: it did....Why then is the agreement so widely regarded by non-economists as a failure? The answer lies partly in the interplay of politics and economics, and accordingly is different in each of the member countries. But one theme is common to all three: a tendency to blame NAFTA in particular, and international integration in general, for every economic disappointment of the past ten years, however tenuous the connection may be.

Debate in the United States has been preoccupied by fears over loss of jobs—by the “giant sucking sound” of work moving south, in Ross Perot's phrase from the early 1990s. A variety of estimates of NAFTA's direct effect on American labour have been made—with job losses running as high, according to one disputed study, as 110,000 a year between 1994 and 2000. But, as already noted, direct losses do not tell the whole story: changing the pattern of employment is after all one of the reasons for promoting trade. So long as lost jobs are balanced by new ones, the overall effect on employment will be small.

J

But the lost jobs were NOT balanced by new ones and with the manufacturing base moving overseas to take advantage of NAFTA the cities that relied on those jobs have been decimated.

You are just WRONG.

[onejayhawk]

But the lost jobs were NOT balanced by new ones and with the manufacturing base moving overseas to take advantage of NAFTA the cities that relied on those jobs have been decimated.

You are just WRONG.

Don't yell at me. I'm just quoting the experts that say you're wrong.

J