[CTC] Friends of TPP Caucus Co-Chair Bails on TPP

[Arthur Stamoulis]

“Friends of the TPP” Caucus Co-chair Charles Boustany says he can’t support the TPP…


http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/08/louisiana_senate_top_candidate.html
Louisiana Senate rivals oppose trade deal that would benefit state

Presidential rivals Donald Trump <http://topics.nola.com/tag/donald%20trump/> and Hillary Clinton <http://topics.nola.com/tag/hillary%20clinton/> have helped to turn a long-held American faith in free trade into a populist storm of opposition, sparked in part by the idea of jobs going out and immigrants coming in.

When Trump laid out his economic strategy Monday (Aug. 8), it included a strong dose of denouncing the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership. He said a vote for Clinton would be a vote for the TPP — a false claim, considering Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders during the primary had already pulled Clinton away from support for the deal. 

Clinton is expected to outline her own economic approach Thursday, and it may well be a milder version of Trump's when it comes to foreign trade.

The rhetoric may be scoring points among a worried working class, but it also puts Louisiana and, by extension, its candidates for an open U.S. Senate seat in a predicament. The Pelican State is different from its counterparts in the Rust Belt — the true target of the Trump-Clinton-Sanders oratory and home to several swing states — in that it stands to benefit from America's expansion as a world trader.

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu <http://topics.nola.com/tag/mitch%20landrieu/> has hosted President Barack Obama <http://topics.nola.com/tag/barack%20obama/>'s trade representative to promote the Trans-Pacific Partnership. No surprise: The Port of New Orleans is one of the busiest in the nation and in a position to grow stronger through moving more foreign goods. 

Gov. John Bel Edwards <http://topics.nola.com/tag/john%20bel%20edwards/> and several New Orleans business leaders also have come out in favor of the deal. 

In this election cycle, however, the political mood is clearly protectionist. 

And the major candidates seeking to replace U.S. Sen. David Vitter are solidly in opposition to the trade deal.  

"There is a tectonic shift coming under both parties in the first quarter of the 21st century, and we don't know where it's going and where it will end," Landrieu said recently.

 <http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/01/pacific_trade_deal_a_win_for_l.html> <http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/01/pacific_trade_deal_a_win_for_l.html>
Pacific trade deal a win for Louisiana, if it can keep its rivers clear <http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/01/pacific_trade_deal_a_win_for_l.html>
For some Louisiana businesses, the historic trade deal between the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim nations is as much about what is under barges and ships in Gulf Coast rivers as it is about the goods they carry.  Louisiana's rivers are in dire need of dredging and the Army Corps of Engineers must continue to invest in maintaining...

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is on life-support. Obama's years-long attempt to corral 11 countries into a pact that could reshape 40 percent of the global economy in a pivot toward Asia met the buzzsaw of American politics. There is a slim chance its supporters can thread the needle between Election Day and the end of a lame-duck Congress in January to pass it. Experts say that would take a miracle.

Louisiana stood to gain more than many states from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. New Orleans' port is the sixth largest in the country by the volume. Combined with the Port of South Louisiana, it's one of the largest complexes in the world. The widening of the Panama Canal promises more activity as even larger ships from Asia can now shortcut into the Gulf of Mexico. An easing of trade restrictions between New Orleans and Asian markets — regardless of whether products were coming or going — would be a boon.

"International trade is good for Louisiana regardless of which direction," said Knud Berthelsen, an international marketing and trade professor at Tulane University. "Import. Export. It's almost all the same."

Chemical manufacturing -- the corridor that runs from Lake Charles almost to New Orleans' backyard -- would be a sure-fire winner. Not only is the infrastructure specialized enough to position Louisiana as a player on a global scale, but it feeds a host of engineering and design firms, highly complicated construction and maintenance outfits that thrive on assisting the industry.

"We've got a much broader segment of the state's economy that's just one step removed from what happens in trade," said Stephen Barnes, director of the LSU Economics & Policy Research Group. "I think, generally, the (TPP's) benefit, the potential benefit to that segment of the economy is going to be very large."

That's not to say other industries won't suffer. Some agricultural products and seafood exports take hits from cheaper labor and techniques in other countries. But some of those traditional sectors have already been dwindling in the face of foreign competition.

Domestically produced shrimp, for instance, is less than 10 percent of the U.S. market as aquaculture farms in Asian countries have come to dominate. Sugarcane is another segment where producers are biting their nails over the TPP, which has provisions to ease some domestic price protections, but the U.S. produces much less than places like Brazil and Thailand.

 <http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/07/john_bel_edwards_2_other_gover.html> <http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/07/john_bel_edwards_2_other_gover.html>
Governors urge Congress to pass Trans-Pacific Partnership <http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/07/john_bel_edwards_2_other_gover.html>
The governors dismissed attacks on the agreement — and opposition from both leading presidential candidates — as misguided. They joined with U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman, who is leading the Obama administration's efforts to sell the plan to a skeptical Congress and public.

"We are reluctant supporters of TPP," said David Veal, executive director of the American Shrimp Processors Association. "We understand that for the most part, that expanded trade is good for everybody. Now having said that, and many people say that 'There's no such thing as fair trade, it's all free trade.' That's not the case. If everyone doesn't deal from the same deck of cards, that's not free trade." 

The challenge, Veal said, is finding ways to help the people and industries who would be losers in the trade deal.

"When you vote for this, you're OK with people losing their jobs. Have we thought about how we go about reinvigorating the sections of the economy that are damaged by these?" Veal said. "If we're smart enough to come up with the TPP, let's see if we can put our brain power to work to repair damaged industries."

The sting of what happened after NAFTA in Louisiana in the 1990s may still resonate. That deal with Mexico and Canada triggered an exodus of the state's apparel and textile factories across the Rio Grande. 

But there is no consensus on whether the TPP will lead to the wholesale destruction of American jobs. A study by the Petersen Institute predicted the TPP would add 796,000 export-related jobs by 2030. That study, however, was swiftly countered by another from Tufts University's Global Development and Environment Institute, which predicted 448,000 jobs would be lost in the United States under the deal. 

It's that concern about an uncertain job market that has become the center of the political debate.

Joseph Cao, the former Republican congressman from New Orleans, provided the most concise reason for his opposition to the TPP. He said he couldn't agree to any deal that includes Vietnam because of its history of human rights abuses. Cao escaped Vietnam to the United States as a child.

"We, as a country founded on religious freedom, founded on rule of law, founded on democracy, have to trade with partners that have the same values," he said, adding that he would reconsider the deal if Vietnam were excised as a partner. 

The candidate who may have the toughest time navigating anti-TPP sentiment is Rep. Charles Boustany, R-Lafayette. An ardent free-trader and considered the Louisiana delegation's foremost authority on trade policy, he has been a leader with the "Friends of the Trans-Pacific Partnership" congressional caucus, which was founded in 2013. 

"After reading the text of the finalized agreement, it is abundantly clear the administration failed to meet key congressional objectives as specified in the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act," Boustany said in a statement. "I cannot support the TPP in its current form."

He later clarified that he disagreed with provisions in the deal that allow countries to refuse to give trade concessions to tobacco companies, allow Mexico to buy rice from Vietnam instead of Louisiana, and don't offer intellectual property protections for pharmaceuticals as strong as those in U.S. law.

State Treasurer John Kennedy, a Republican from Madisonville, called the lack of any safeguards against currency manipulation the agreement's major flaw. That's the tactic deployed when a country artificially keeps low the value of its money against the American dollar, making imported American goods more expensive than domestically made ones.

"If you're in doubt about something this important that affects 40 percent of the world's economy, then I say don't do it," Kennedy said.

 <http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/05/trade_louisiana.html> <http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/05/trade_louisiana.html>
Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal would be great for Louisiana <http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/05/trade_louisiana.html>
In 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt led the passage of the Trade Agreement Act, which allowed the United States to negotiate reciprocal treaties with numerous countries, lowering tariffs and stimulating trade. This move to free trade reversed the disastrous Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which contributed to a staggering 66 percent decline in world trade between 1929 and 1934.  As a result...

Rep. John Fleming, R-Minden, saw it as "open season to bring in as many foreign workers as possible" to take American jobs, he said at a forum Tuesday night. He earlier had criticized it for too few intellectual property protections and an attack on the American textile industry.

Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell, a Democrat from Elm Grove, said it was skewed to the advantage of big business and had attracted opposition from all political sides.

"If Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump are against it," he said, "we'd better take a good look at this deal because all sides are against it."

Retired Air Force Col. Rob Maness, R-Madisonville, couldn't be farther to the right of  attorney Caroline Fayard, D-New Orleans, on the political spectrum, but both criticized the TPP for its closed-door negotiations and the potential threat to American jobs.

"We need to have as free a market as possible but we need to have a level playing field for us Americans," Maness said.

"Everyone is having a strong conversation about trade and the American working family, and it's really refreshing," Fayard said. "the sense of the pulse of the people is, at least to me, is we've got to start protecting our working families."

The candidates all displayed the thick streak of American protectionism that has dominated the trade debates of 2016.

"Those days of us just being the good guys (in trade deals) need to be numbered," said Troy Hebert, a former Alcohol and Tobacco Control Commissioner running as an independent.
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