[CTC] Barack and Hillary’s awkward TPP two-step

[Arthur Stamoulis]

POLITICO Pro

Barack and Hillary’s awkward TPP two-step

By Doug Palmer <https://www.politicopro.com/staff/doug-palmer>
06/10/16 03:55 PM EDT

President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will be joined at the hip over the next five months, as the nation’s first African-American president works to shore up his legacy by helping elect the first female president.

But on one issue — the Trans-Pacific Partnership — a glaring difference will remain. Having come out against the landmark agreement, it’s virtually impossible for Clinton to change her position without fueling Donald Trump’s charge that she can’t be trusted and alienating Democratic supporters who oppose the pact. 

Meanwhile, Obama will continue to use every opportunity to push for the legacy-defining agreement, as evidenced by his Thursday night appearance on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon," where the nation’s commander in chief slipped in an extended plug for TPP <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziwYbVx_-qg> in a droll turn as straight man to the late-night comedian.

"Look, Jimmy, the TPP allows American businesses to sell their products both at home and abroad,” Obama said. “The more we sell abroad, the more higher-paying jobs we provide here at home. It's that simple."

Obama and Clinton will make the first of many joint campaign appearances next Wednesday in Wisconsin, a state where TPP-foe Bernie Sanders triumphed over Clinton in the March 5 primary.

“I’m with her, I am fired up, and I cannot wait to get out there to campaign for Hillary,” Obama said in a video on Wednesday announcing his endorsement and extolling Clinton’s experience and qualifications for the job.

For her part, Clinton has reveled in Obama’s support. 

“It is absolutely a joy and an honor that President Obama and I have gone from fierce competitors to true friends,” she told Reuters in an interview <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/10/us/politics/obama-hillary-clinton-endorsement.html?_r=0>. “Through it all, my esteem for him just kept growing and it means the world to me to know he has my back in this election. He has been very supportive over the past 15 months or so, and it’s a great opportunity for us to campaign together in the general election.”

The lovefest between the president and potential future president could save TPP if Clinton is elected and Republican congressional leaders decide to move on the pact in the brief “lame-duck” session after the election.

“I think Obama will go to her and say I want to get it done and don’t get in the way,” said Bill Reinsch, a trade policy fellow at the Center Stimson, a nonpartisan think tank. “My guess is she will go along. … I don’t think she’ll say no.”

At the same time, TPP could be the trade-deal-that-must-not-be-named when Obama and Clinton barnstorm the country. “My guess is when he campaigns with her, they’ll talk about something else,” Reinsch said.

But for his part, Trump appears determined to use trade as a wedge issue to peel away votes from Clinton in battleground states. In remarks to the Faith and Freedom Coalition on Friday, he charged that Clinton’s education, immigration, trade and economic policies “would plunge our poor African-American and Hispanic communities into turmoil and, even worse, despair.”

Trump opposes TPP and has been scathing in his assessment of trade deals negotiated by both Republican and Democratic administrations over the past 25 years. “I don’t think anybody negotiating these deals even knows anything about what they’re doing and I don’t think they care about America being first,” he said at Friday's event. 

That view is strikingly at odds with traditional Republican beliefs, expressed again this week in a set of policy proposals to strengthen national security rolled out by House Speaker Paul Ryan and other party leaders.

“The United States must promote open markets and expand free trade. Not only does trade grow the American economy, but it spreads global freedom, thereby making the world safer for America,” the House GOP proposal said.

That suggests Trump has his own dance to do with the Republican leadership, with the platform that emerges from the July convention hopefully hewing closer to the party’s long-time support for trade agreements, Millan Mulraine, deputy head of U.S. research and strategy at TD Securities, said during a discussion hosted by the Washington International Trade Association.

“For Trump, it probably is a bit harder for him to be talked back to the center because he has taken such an entrenched position — I wouldn’t necessarily say to the right, because when you think of the right, the right is for free trade — so a more populist or nationalist position on trade,” Mulraine said. 

“In terms of Hillary, nobody really believes she’s against free trade and that’s the nature of politics and elections,” he added. “You say what you need to say to get elected, and then when you get elected, you change your tune.”

That’s a view held widely among trade professionals, who suspect Clinton will not stand in the way if a chance emerges to approve TPP in the lame duck.

“My guess is she’ll figure out a way to do it, but it is going to be interesting to watch,” Ken Roberts, president of WorldCity, a Miami-based media and event company focused on trade. “Politics is a little bit like the violin, you pick it up with your left and you play it with your right.”


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