Courting Unions, Hillary Clinton Says She Didn’t Work on Trans-Pacific Partnership

H/t reader M.G.:

“This is a bald faced lie. According to the UK Guardian, and the Telegraph, this mendacious piece of crap supported and promoted Obama’s debacle of a secret trade agreement as secretary of state. They had the proof, this is an incredible lie.

I would not vote for her as ditch digger….She is just another tired old retread, and I would hope Americans are sick of them from both parties…Same old clowns jump in the race every damn election season……..just like bad pennies.”


Hillary Rodham Clinton Satanic HandsignHillary-Clinton-CFR

Courting Unions, Hillary Clinton Says She Didn’t Work on Trans-Pacific Partnership (Bloomberg, July 30, 2015):

Hillary Clinton appeared to take another step away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership on Thursday, telling reporters that she didn’t work on the controversial trade deal while serving as President Barack Obama’s secretary of state.

The Democratic presidential front-runner, who advocated for a multi-lateral Asia trade agreement as a member of Obama’s administration but has pointedly refused to endorse the results as a candidate to succeed her old boss, walked a careful semantic line following a private meeting with the AFL-CIO executive council. Many of the group’s members vehemently oppose the proposed trade deal.

“I did not work on TPP,” Clinton said. “That was the responsibility of the United States Trade Representative.” She added: “I never had any direct responsibility for the negotiations at all.”

Clinton so far has refused to say whether she will support or oppose the trade deal. Obama hails it as a jobs creator but many other Democrats, including Clinton’s chief challenger for the Democratic nomination, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, decry it as a threat to American workers and their wages.

As America’s chief diplomat, Clinton said Thursday, “I advocated for a multi-national agreement that would quote ‘be the gold standard.’”

That appeared to be a reference to a 2012 speech in Australia, when the then-secretary of state said that “we need to keep upping our game both bilaterally and with partners across the region through agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership…This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field.”

But when a reporter on Thursday tried to pin Clinton down about whether she was endorsing the TPP at the time, she answered, “No, no, no,” and added: “I never had any direct responsibility for the negotiations at all.”

While Clinton herself would not have been personally engaged in the nitty-gritty of hammering out the TPP, the State Department is represented at the table when trade deals are negotiated. Her downplaying of her role appears to contradict the view of at least one of her peers. Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, last month told Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin that Clinton “participated in everything we did in the first term in a meaningful way,” and “was instrumental in formulating and implementing the re-balance to Asia, of which the Trans-Pacific partnership is a part.”

Clinton’s latest comments followed a closed-door session AFL-CIO’s executive council. One of five presidential candidates who met individually with the council, Clinton said TPP came up several times during her meeting. Outside, she repeated what are now well-rehearsed arguments on what it would take to win her backing for the deal:

“There are three tests that I want to see met: does this protect American workers, does it raise wages and increase economic opportunity and is it in our national security interests,” Clinton told reporters. She said she was hearing that “there have been some changes in a direction that I personally might approve, but I don’t know if there have been enough changes and I won’t know until I actually see what’s been negotiated.” Two people who were in the executive council’s meeting with Clinton told Bloomberg that her public comments echoed what she’d just told the union leaders.

The TPP, which critics say would drive down wages and health and safety standards,  has become an awkward issue for Clinton as she courts unions and progressives. This month Larry Cohen, who just retired after a decade heading the Communications Workers of America, announced that candidate Clinton’s lack of leadership on trade had spurred him to endorse and volunteer for Bernie Sanders. “She’s going to have that responsibility the rest of her life, that she didn’t do anything, and watched fast track go through,” Cohen told Bloomberg Monday. “Why would you expect if she’s elected that it would be any better? It would be worse, because she’s in campaign mode now.”

Other union leaders were  satisfied with Clinton’s trade talk. “I did not find her to be uncertain or elusive,” International Association of Fire Fighters President Harold Schaitberger told Bloomberg Thursday. “I thought she was pretty thoughtful. She wasn’t as muscular as some were, but she made it clear her view of the issue.”

1 thought on “Courting Unions, Hillary Clinton Says She Didn’t Work on Trans-Pacific Partnership”

  1. She is a despicable, mendacious and amoral retread……She would say and do anything for more……more power, money…….Her incompetence is overwhelming, as the fool emails show. Regardless of what was in them, the folly of exposing national security documents to any hacker on the globe shows she has been promoted beyond her abilities…..The Peter Principle comes to mind……

    She showed her true colors when promoting that duplicitous husband of her’s as president……She had no compunctions about anything. Read the book “Game Change” it shows her complete lack of character.

    I think Bernie Sanders is going to do an Obama on her because her negatives continue to rise. She isn’t trustworthy, she waffles and blabs outright lies about her history…..Anyone else remember the story about ducking bullets on a visit to some backwater country that was exposed as pure fantasy? It was pathetic….

    This lie is beyond belief! If the democrats are fool enough to run her (the republicans really want her as the opponent), they will lose. Americans are sick of retreads, the same losers who jump in every election cycle……

    Reply

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