[CTC] Obama Scolds Democrats on Trade Pact Stance

Sat May 9 09:56:03 PDT 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/business/nike-to-create-jobs-if-trans-pacific-partnership-is-approved.html?_r=0

Obama Scolds Democrats on Trade Pact Stance
By PETER BAKER <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/peter_baker/index.html>MAY 8, 2015

BEAVERTON, Ore. — President Obama on Friday lashed out at critics within his own party as he accused fellow Democrats of deliberately distorting the potential impact of the sweeping new trade agreement he is negotiating with Asia and standing in the way of a modern competitive economy.

With the cutting tone he usually reserves for his Republican adversaries, Mr. Obama said liberals who are fighting the new trade accord, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, were “just wrong” and, in terms of some of their claims, “making this stuff up.” If they oppose the deal, he said, they “must be satisfied with the status quo” and want to “pull up the drawbridge and build a moat around ourselves.”

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“There have been a bunch of critics about trade deals generally and the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” he told an estimated 2,100 workers at the Nike <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/nike_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org>headquarters here. “And what’s interesting is typically they’re my friends coming from my party. And they’re my fellow travelers on minimum wage and on job training and on clean energy and on every progressive issue, they’re right there with me. And then on this, they’re like whupping on me.”

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But Mr. Obama said that he had no political motive for supporting freer trade with Asia. “I’ve run my last election,” he said. “And the only reason I do something is because I think it’s good for American workers and the American people and the American economy.” And so, “on this issue, on trade, I actually think some of my dearest friends are wrong. They’re just wrong.”

The president’s speech here on the sprawling campus of the sports apparel company represented his most expansive defense of his trade agenda since asking Congress to grant him negotiating power often called fast-track authority. His forceful words underscored the crossfire among Democrats over trade and the enormous challenge he faces in rallying his party behind one of the most significant initiatives left in his presidency.

The presidential trip here to trade-friendly Oregon was part of an unusually concerted White House drive to press Democrats to fall in line. Mr. Obama hoped to capitalize on an announcement by Nike that the company and its partners would create up to 10,000 new jobs in the United States if the Pacific trade pact was approved. He later flew to Watertown, S.D., to give the commencement address at a technical institute to highlight his proposal for free community college to train workers for the modern economy.

But the president has yet to convince many allies, and his sharp criticism seemed aimed partly at Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat leading the fight against the trade deal, although he did not cite her by name. His remarks may only further provoke Senator Harry M. Reid of Nevada, the minority leader who was already said to be so annoyed by Mr. Obama’s language lately that he was motivated to make a more robust effort to block trade negotiating authority.

Other Democrats on Friday bristled at the notion that they were wrong or distorting facts. “It may be a freebie, a throwaway line that denigrates members of Congress,” Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, said in an interview. “Well, presidents can do that. But the bulk of the information buttresses everything that we have been saying and that’s the ground on which we stand.”

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Representative Louise Slaughter, Democrat of New York, said experience with North American Free Trade Agreement, or Nafta, and subsequent trade deals bolstered their concerns. “I don’t know why he would say that,” she said. “We’ll all forgive him, of course. But it’s absolutely inaccurate. We know exactly what we’re talking about. My concern is that he does not understand what’s in it.”

She needled the president for becoming such a full-throated advocate of trade after having sided with its critics during his first run for the presidency. “This is the same Barack Obama who ran in 2008 wanting to renegotiate Nafta that was so bad?” Ms. Slaughter asked. “Is this the same guy?”

The clash underscored the president’s remove from his own party on this issue and echoed similar difficulties other presidents have had with allies late in their terms. In May 2007, at the same point in his presidency down to the month, George W. Bush gave a speech that was strikingly similar in its tone and frustration in which he condemned fellow Republicans opposing his efforts to overhaul the immigration system. In the end, Mr. Bush’s alliance with the opposition Democrats collapsed.

Mr. Bush was significantly weaker with Republicans than Mr. Obama is with Democrats, according to polls, but the similarity suggests the cycle of history in which presidents at this stage are more willing to challenge their party orthodoxy even as their party feels freer to abandon them on points of ideology, principle and political calculation. Even Hillary Rodham Clinton, who as secretary of state was part of the administration when trade negotiations began, is now hedging support as she runs for the presidency.

Continue reading the main story <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/business/nike-to-create-jobs-if-trans-pacific-partnership-is-approved.html?_r=0#story-continues-8>RECENT COMMENTS

Susan 1 hour ago
If this is such a great deal, why isn't the entire agreement published and debated by both the public and the Congress? WikiLeaks published...
Joan 1 hour ago
Obama is being condescending and disingenuous. If he thinks Senator Warren and others are "just wrong" then he should publish the drafts and...
lhamick 1 hour ago
The TPP has little to do with Trade. It is mainly a tremendous increase in power of American multinational corporations. Among other...
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Nike was a risky choice for Mr. Obama to make his case for trade. For years, the multibillion-dollar company has been cited as a case study by opponents of trade liberalization for its reliance on low-wage workers in Asia. But Mr. Obama hoped that the company’s announcement would help him argue that a new trade agreement could foster more manufacturing jobs at home, rather than shipping more jobs overseas.

“Free trade opens doors. It removes barriers. It creates jobs. It lets us invest more in the things that matter — that’s innovation, that’s creativity and people,” Mark Parker, the company’s chief executive, told the crowd before Mr. Obama’s speech.

Nike employs about 26,000 people in America, but its contract factories overseas employ about one million people, roughly a third of them in Vietnam. The firm said tariff relief would allow the company to speed development of advanced manufacturing methods and a domestic supply chain. In addition to 10,000 new manufacturing and engineering jobs, the company predicted that the trade pact would create up to 40,000 indirect jobs with suppliers and service companies over 10 years.

Mr. Obama acknowledged that Nafta and other trade deals “didn’t always live up to the hype,” but he promised greater labor and environmental protections in the new Pacific accord and said it would fix some of the problems of older agreements, in effect fulfilling that 2008 campaign promise Ms. Slaughter recalled.

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“When you ask folks specifically, ‘What do you oppose about this trade deal?’ they just say, ‘Nafta,’ ” Mr. Obama said. “Nafta was passed 20 years ago. That was a different agreement. And in fact this agreement fixes some of what was wrong with Nafta by making labor and environmental provisions actually enforceable. I was just getting out of law school when Nafta got passed.”

Mr. Obama insisted that “this is the most progressive trade deal in history” and he scorned critics who say it would undermine American laws and regulations on food safety <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/f/food_safety/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>, worker rights and even financial regulations <http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/credit_crisis/financial_regulatory_reform/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>, an implicit pushback against Ms. Warren. “They’re making this stuff up,” he said. “This is just not true. No trade agreement’s going to force us to change our laws.”

“The fact is,” he added, “some folks are just opposed to trade deals out of principle, a reflexive principle. And what I tell them is, ‘You know what? If you’re opposed to these smart, progressive trade deals, then that means you must be satisfied with the status quo.’ ”
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