[CTC] [6 articles] Dem Debate: Sanders vs. Clinton on 'free trade' and TPP

[Dolan, Mike]

In case you missed the CNN debate in Flint last night ...
MFD :: IBT

Sanders Echoes Trump: "How Stupid Are These Trade Policies?"
Real Clear Politics
By Tim Hains
March 6, 2016
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/03/06/sanders_echoes_trump_how_stupid_are_these_trade_policies.html

At the seventh Democratic presidential debate, hosted by CNN in Flint, Michigan Sunday night, Sen. Bernie Sanders took a page out of the Donald Trump playbook to attack Democratic rival Hillary Clinton on trade.

Sanders hits Secretary Clinton for her support of "stupid" trade agreements like NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and blames the urban decay in deindustrialized cities like Detroit on her husband's trade policies. President Bill Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994.

"Many, many Republicans and far too many Democrats who supported these disastrous trade policies," Sanders said. "Not only job loss by the millions, but a race to the bottom so that new jobs in manufacturing in some cases pay 50% less than they did 20 years ago."

"How stupid is that trade policy?"

Bernie Sanders emulated the Donald Trump method, sending out an outrageous tweet to draw attention to the issue, and then taking the opportunity to explain who is "stupid."

Transcript:

ANDERSON COOPER: You sent a tweet on Thursday, and this is the tweet (above). I am showing the viewers. "The people of Detroit know the costs of Hillary Clinton's free trade policies," and it shows pictures of crumbling buildings. It seems like you are blaming her for the situation in Detroit.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: I'm blaming the trade policies. THis is an amazing thing which I didn't know until recently: I wonder how people didn't know this.

COOPER: You call it Hillary Clinton's.

SANDERS: And everyone else who supported them. She was not alone. Many, many Republicans and far too many Democrats who supported these disastrous trade policies...

Do you know that in 1960, Detroit, Michigan was one of the wealthiest cities in America?

Flint, Michigan was a prosperous city. Corporate America said why do I want to pay someone in Michigan a living wage when I can pay slave wages in Mexico or China.

We are going to shut down and move abroad and bring the products back. Those trade policies as much as any other set of policies has resulted in the shrinking of the American middle class. And I will tell you what else it did. Not only job loss by the millions, but a race to the bottom so that new jobs in manufacturing in some cases pay 50% less than they did 20 years ago.

How stupid is that trade policy?


Sanders rips Clinton over free trade
Politico
By Nolan D. McCaskill
March 6, 2016
http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-dem-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/03/sanders-goes-after-clinton-aggressively-on-trade-220339

Bernie Sanders aggressively attacked Hillary Clinton for her record on international trade, saying her recent campaign actions are at odd with her legislative career.

"I am very glad, Anderson, that Secretary Clinton has discovered religion on this issue," the Vermont senator told CNN moderator Anderson Cooper. "But it's a little bit too late. Secretary Clinton supported virtually every one of these disastrous trade agreements written by corporate America."

Clinton introduced a clawback proposal during Sunday's Democratic debate that would go after corporations that receive tax benefits but outsource jobs overseas.

Sanders cited a series of deals Clinton supported, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the hundreds of thousands of jobs it cost American workers. "You didn't need a Ph.D. in economics to understand that American workers should not be forced to compete against people in Mexico making 25 cents an hour," Sanders said.

"They're gonna start having to, if I'm president, invest in this country," he concluded.

Cooper asked Sanders about a tweet his campaign put out tweet that accused Clinton's "free trade policies" of being responsible for the decline of Detroit and featured photos of derelict buildings.

Clinton defended her record, saying she opposed the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership and the lone trade agreement of her Senate tenure, the Central American Free Trade Agreement.

Have trade policies hurt? Democrats in Flint's presidential debate differ
Detroit Free Press
By Matthew Dolan
March 6, 2016
http://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/2016/03/06/have-trade-policies-hurt-democrats-debate-differ/81420472/

The Democratic candidates seeking their party's nomination for president clashed over trade policy Sunday night as Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders sparred over their records seen as important to organized labor.

Sanders has tried to link Clinton to her husband's support of the North American Free Trade Agreement and her belated opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

"I am very glad that Secretary Clinton has discovered religion on this issue," Sanders said Sunday night at the debate in Flint, Mich. of Clinton's opposition to the TPP pact. He said past free trade agreements has pitted American workers earning a decent wage against foreign national workers earning less than a dollar an hour in their home countries where jobs have grown at the expense of U.S. employment.

In addition, Sanders said it was one of the prime factors that has led to massive job losses in Michigan and the decline of Detroit.

Clinton, in turn, attacked Sanders for siding with Republicans in opposing the Export-Import Bank, which the former first lady and secretary of state said helps Michigan businesses.

"We're in a race for exports," Clinton said, saying that the U.S. must help its business compete against other industrialized nations which aid their companies grow their international trade.

Trade is a bigger piece of the U.S. economy than it was in the early 1990s, when the last major trade deal, the North American Free Trade Agreement, was negotiated, according to the Pew Research Center.

Sanders is trailing Clinton in most Michigan polls and in the number of delegates already awarded. He has opposed all trade deals, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, because he said they hurt working families.

Both Sanders and Clinton have opposed the most recent trade deal, the Trans Pacific Partnership. And both candidates have gotten a number of endorsements from different labor unions.

But Clinton and her supporters have criticized Sanders for opposing the Export-Import Bank, which is also opposed by some conservatives. The bank helps finance U.S. companies' exports into foreign markets.


Sanders attacks Clinton's support for trade agreements
Detroit News
By Chad Livengood
March 6, 2016
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/03/05/granholm-hits-sanders-blaming-clinton-trade-dea/81368906/

Warren - Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Saturday honed his criticism of rival Hillary Clinton's support for "disastrous" international trade agreements in a speech seeking to appeal to Macomb County voters who work in the manufacturing industry.

Speaking at a Saturday night campaign rally at Macomb Community College, Sanders said Michigan has been "continually hard hit" by the country's diminishing manufacturing production over a period of three decades following trade agreements with Mexico, China, South Korea and other countries with lower standards of living.

The Vermont senator sought to blame the resulting job losses on Clinton's varied support for trade deals, dating back to the North American Free Trade Agreement forged by her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

"I voted in complete opposition to every one of these disastrous trade agreements," Sanders said. "Secretary Clinton voted for virtually all of them."

Sanders acknowledged "trade is not a sexy issue."

But the self-described democratic socialist sought to link free trade agreements to his overall campaign theme that the American economy is rigged in the favor of corporations and Wall Street banking interests that are friendlier to Clinton than him.

"Everybody who had half a brain understood what these trade agreements were about," said Sanders, whose campaign has labeled Clinton "outsourcer-in-chief."

Sanders' criticism of Clinton on trade agreements is likely to play out Sunday night in their televised debate at The Whiting Auditorium in Flint.

"I thought he came out pretty strong on that tonight," said Dennis Costello, 60, of Grosse Pointe, who attended the Sanders rally in Warren. "That's what he has to do to differentiate himself with Hillary Clinton."

But the Clinton campaign and her allies are pushing back.

Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm said Saturday it's unfair for Sanders to blame Hillary Clinton for trade deals favored by her husband and President Barack Obama.

NAFTA was a 1994 trade pact former President Bill Clinton forged in office. Hillary Clinton originally supported the concept of TPP as Obama's Secretary of State, but came out against the deal last year as a candidate for president.

Sanders has insinuated Hillary Clinton shares in the blame for NAFTA and TPP as part of his larger campaign against corporate America and Wall Street banking interests in the Democratic presidential primaries.

In 2012, Clinton called the TPP trade pact linking the economies of countries from Canada to Chile and across the Pacific Ocean to Japan "the gold standard in trade agreements to open, free, transparent, fair trade," according to published reports.

"It's not really fair to ascribe NAFTA to her when it was her husband's administration," Granholm said in a telephone interview with The Detroit News. "And, of course, it's not really fair to ascribe TPP to her when it was her boss's administration. She can't go against somebody who she worked for."

As a U.S. senator from New York, Clinton voted against the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) forged by Republican President George W. Bush's administration.

"I think people have to be fair about looking at how she acted when she was on her own," said Granholm, who is supporting Clinton's candidacy.

On Thursday, Sanders highlighted trade policy at a press confernece in Lansing.

"On the issue of trade, Secretary Clinton's views and mine are very different," Sanders said. "She has supported NAFTA, I opposed it. She supported permanent normal trade relations with China, I vigorously opposed the (permanent trade) with China. She supported permanent normal trade relations with Vietnam, I opposed that."

"She supported the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. I opposed that. And she supported the Korean Free Trade Agreement. I opposed that."

After Sanders made those remarks Thursday morning, the Clinton campaign hastily organized a media conference with U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow and Clinton's policy adviser, Jake Sullivan, to highlight her policy proposals for aiding the manufacturing sector. Sullivan said Sanders has no such plan.

"In his years in Congress, he has been AWOL when it comes to putting forward proposals that would help lift up American manufacturers," Sullivan told reporters.

Granholm said Sanders' general opposition to trade agreements and advocacy for nationwide infrastructure improvements falls short of being a substantive plan to create middle class jobs.

"The job creation piece ... is one of the ways you address income inequality and the hollowing out of the middle class," Granholm said. "She's got a comprehensive strategy to do that."

Clinton's job creation plan includes tax incentives to spur manufacturing job creation in cities hardest hit by economic decline and new tariffs to combat currency manipulation by other countries, particularly China. Clinton also wants to slap companies that relocate their headquarters overseas for tax purposes with an exit tax to discourage the practice.

"His job strategy really focuses on infrastructure, which is really important, and she focuses on infrastructure also," Granholm said. "But just trade and infrastructure is not as comprehensive as hers and that to me is a big difference."

Clinton and Sanders will square off at 8 p.m. Sunday on CNN in the seventh Democratic presidential candidate debate of this primary season, two days before Michigan Democrats go to the polls in Tuesday's primary.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders clash over trade
MSNBC
By Khorri Atkinson
March 5, 2016
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hillary-clinton-and-bernie-sanders-clash-over-trade

With the Michigan Democratic primary contest coming up on March 8, presidential hopefuls Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are taking vigorous jabs at each other's positions on trade amid concerns about the future of the state that once was a booming manufacturing hub.

Sanders, for the most part, has been making sharp contrasts with the former secretary of state's judgment on trade. At campaign stops in Detroit this week, the Vermont senator called Clinton a "outsourcer in chief." He told supporters that Clinton supported controversial trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement under her husband's administration.

"All of these trade agreements together have cost us millions of decent-paying jobs, led to the de-industrialization of America and the decline of the American middle class," said Sanders on Friday, who noted that he had fought against virtually all trade deals since he was a junior congressman.

On the campaign trail, Sanders often uses Clinton's reversed position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to portray her as a flip-flopper. The former first lady announced her opposition to the TPP last October, six months into her presidential campaign, in an interview with PBS NewsHour's Judy Woodruff. "I don't believe it's going to meet the high bar I have set," Clinton said. She helped in early negotiations of the deal while serving as President Obama's secretary of state, at one point calling it the "gold standard."

Clinton fended off Sanders' attacks on Friday in Detroit, saying, "Anyone running for president owes it to you to come up with real ideas, not an ideology, not an old set of talking points but a credible strategy designed for the world we live in now."

She added that, on trade, the next president would need "judgment and experience." Clinton also criticized Sanders for his lack of a detailed manufacturing plan and opposition to the Federal Export-Import Bank, which helps foreign consumers purchase American goods.

Clinton also released an ad in Michigan targeting companies that are moving their operations overseas to avoid paying American taxes and reduce labor costs. The ad points to Clinton's proposal of an "exit tax" for such companies.

Sanders also debuted a television ad this week, asserting his consistent position on issues relating to trade and manufacturing.  "While others waffle, Bernie is fighting hundreds of thousands in new job losses," the ad says.

The candidates meet in Flint, Michigan, on Sunday night for a Democratic presidential debate hosted by CNN.

Fact-Check: Bernie Sanders, Abandoned Buildings And NAFTA
NPR
By Danielle Kurtzleben
March 6, 2016
http://www.npr.org/2016/03/06/469234776/fact-check-bernie-sanders-abandoned-buildings-and-nafta

This story is part of NPR's fact-checking series, Break It Down.

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton will face off in the Michigan primary on Tuesday, at a time when the state's major cities have seen better days. Flint faces a lead-tainted-water crisis, while Detroit is still reeling from its bankruptcy.

Sanders attacked Clinton on Twitter this week, connecting Clinton's support for free trade, specifically the North American Free Trade Agreement signed into law by her husband, to the kind of blight Detroit and other cities in the Upper Midwest are seeing.

But is it that simple? We decided to try and find out.

The Claim:

On Thursday, Sanders tweeted, "The people of Detroit know the real cost of Hillary Clinton's free trade policies," along with five photos of dilapidated buildings. Shortly after that initial tweet, he added: "43,000 Michiganders lost their jobs due to NAFTA. I opposed that bad deal, @HillaryClinton did not."

The Big Question:

There's a lot going on here, so we're going to break this into two parts:

1. What does free trade (and especially NAFTA) have to do with the devastation Sanders' tweet depicted?

2. How big of a proponent of NAFTA was Hillary Clinton?

The Short Answers:

1. Probably not much (though it did cost some people their jobs), and

2. She supported it, though she expressed reservations sometimes. (Either way, importantly, it was signed under her husband's administration.)

The Long Answers:

Let's do this point by point:

1. What does free trade have to do with the devastation Sanders tweeted about?

Detroit's blight makes for striking photos, but its causes go well beyond trade policy.

"I'm pretty sure the buildings he posted were abandoned before 1993 [when NAFTA was signed]," said James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Policy Institute, a Michigan-based economic policy think tank that describes itself as "free market"-oriented.

Maybe the most succinct way to illustrate this point is with a chart of Detroit's population over the years:

White flight: Clearly, Detroit had plenty of problems (and abandoned buildings) outside of trade agreements. And those problems started well before, for example NAFTA or the decision to normalize trade relations with China in 2000. In the 1950s and 1960s, and particularly after the 1967 race riots, Detroit was the poster child of "white flight," as hundreds of thousands of white Detroiters fled to the suburbs.

Since then, other factors have contributed to Detroit's decline:

Auto industry problems: Threatened by strikes, some factories started to leave the city - and no other industry could fill the gap left by those factories, as the New York Times reported in 2013. Foreign competition also contributed to the decline in employment, and many argue that automation also has hurt manufacturing.

Mismanagement: Many also point the finger at a series of Detroit's mayors for problems ranging from bad fiscal decisions to outright corruption.

All of this made for a vicious cycle. A diminished population left a weaker economy and also less government revenue, which meant fewer government services, which meant a lower quality of life, which helped send more people packing.

Even in the last few years, the population continued to plummet - the Census Bureau reported in 2011 that the Motor City's population fell by a stunning 25 percent between 2000 and 2010.

"That's really not going to be NAFTA," Hohman said. "That's basic corruption and mismanagement of the city government that has made it unable to provide the basic services."

Also, there's the question of what Sanders means by "Hillary Clinton's free trade policies." It's true that she voted for some trade pacts as a senator and that she once was an advocate for TPP (more on that later), but as for NAFTA, that was signed under her husband's administration. She did promote it at one point (more on that later, too), as Sanders says, but that in particular isn't her policy.

OK. So if free trade policies like NAFTA didn't drive Detroit's decline, that doesn't mean it didn't affect the city's (or the state of Michigan's) economy. Sanders' 43,000 figure comes from a 2011 report by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning policy think tank that has produced several reports about the potential detrimental effects of trade pacts like NAFTA and TPP.

Specifically, that 43,000 number refers to the number of jobs "displaced due to trade deficits with Mexico" - and, in terms of percent change, EPI ranks Michigan as the hardest hit. Altogether, that report said the U.S. lost more than 680,000 jobs, as of 2010, to Mexico, thanks to NAFTA.

Meanwhile, the Clinton administration had argued that the pact would create hundreds of thousands of jobs. And that argument for NAFTA continues to this day. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce last year said that NAFTA "supports" millions of jobs. The idea is that opening up the U.S. to that many new markets (and new customers) sparks more economic activity.

So two different sides disagree on the direction of the employment effects of trade policy - but then, some economists believe that trade pacts simply don't bring about any major changes in the long run.

"Most analysts would agree that, and we certainly agree that, jobs were lost. It's true that jobs are lost," said Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow and trade expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

He added that the auto industry was one of the hardest hit by NAFTA, as some production was shifted to Mexico. However, Hufbauer contended the net number of jobs created by a trade agreement usually balances that out.

"Any trade agreement is basically a job churn agreement," he said. "Jobs are lost, and jobs are gained, and on balance it's about zero in terms of number of jobs." (Read more about this dynamic in a fact check on TPP job gains from the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler.)

As one 2004 Congressional Research Service study - itself a review of other studies - found, NAFTA had "little or no impact on aggregate employment" during its then-10-year existence.

Hufbauer added that he believes, on balance, that the gains from trade are positive, leading to lower prices on consumer goods and higher-wage jobs. Of course, if that's true, that still stings for the workers who loses her job at, say, a Michigan auto plant, if she isn't qualified for or can't reach the job that replaces hers.

And not everyone buys this idea. Robert Scott, who wrote the EPI report, argued that while the net-zero effect might be true in theory, it's not true in practice. He believes that, thanks to a number of factors including what economists call secular stagnation, the U.S. isn't producing those replacement jobs. And those jobs that NAFTA did create he believes tend to be lower-wage than the ones it sent elsewhere.

So NAFTA meant that some people lost their jobs as factories moved South of the border, while other jobs were created.

And it's true that employment has fallen in Michigan's manufacturing sector since the agreement was signed (though the major decline began years after NAFTA took effect).

But knowing exactly how many of those job losses (or gains in other sectors or other places) to attribute NAFTA is virtually impossible, as NPR's Don Gonyea put it in 2013, as the causes are complicated and interwoven.

Regardless of how trade affected the local economy, tying Detroit's problems to more open trade is far oversimplifying what's going on. "Detroit and Flint are suffering, largely from self-inflicted, in some cases state-inflicted, wounds," said Hohman.

2. Did Hillary Clinton support NAFTA?

Yes, though she often expressed reservations.

"I think NAFTA is proving its worth," she said in 1996.

And she told an audience at Davos in 1998, "I hope that American business voices will be heard" in promoting fast-track authority, a policy under which Congress can give trade pacts an up-or-down vote only.

However, she added that there needed to be "sensitivity to worker and environmental concerns."

In her book Living History, she characterized NAFTA as an "important administration goal" for her husband's presidency and praised the pact's potential to create jobs, despite the fact that it was "unpopular with labor unions." But over the years, she offered measured critiques. In 2000, she had called the agreement "flawed," and, in 2004, she said that while the agreement was "on balance" good for the U.S., it could have been negotiated better.

Later, when running for president, she was more explicitly critical of the agreement. "NAFTA was a mistake to the extent that it did not deliver on what we had hoped it would," she said in a 2007 CNN presidential primary debate.

Clinton's record doesn't show her to be fully in favor of or opposed to all instances of trade liberalization. While she voted for several deals as a New York senator, she also voted against the 2005 Central American Free Trade Agreement.

"Some people are generally pro-trade or anti-trade. She's case-by-case on trade," as Gene Sperling, chairman of the National Economic Council under both Presidents Clinton and Obama, told the Washington Post in 2015.

The Broader Context

This doesn't just matter because the Michigan primary is coming up. And it's not that Sanders is unnecessarily fixated on a 23-year-old trade deal. Rather, this is all part of a bigger fight over the Trans Pacific Partnership, the massive trade deal that the U.S. has been negotiating with Asia.

On TPP, President Obama has found himself in the unusual position of agreeing with many Republicans and the business community on TPP while alienating farther-left lawmakers, with Sanders among the most vocal critics of the deal.

As secretary of state, Clinton most famously supported the TPP when she, in 2012, told an audience that it "sets the gold standard" for trade agreements. (CNN later counted 45 instances in which she praised the deal.) And this has been one of the areas on which Sanders has been able to contrast himself most with Clinton - and therefore hit her hard. Many labor unions are strongly opposed to the trade deal as well, meaning hitting Clinton on TPP could threaten her support.

But on the campaign trail in 2015, she expressed doubts about the deal. And then in October, she made her position clear, telling PBS NewsHour's Judy Woodruff that the deal didn't meet the "high bar" she said she had set for it.

Not that Sanders is about to let this go. As Sanders Campaign Manager Jeff Weaver said on Thursday, "Election-year conversions won't bring back American jobs."




Michael F. Dolan, J.D.
Legislative Representative
International Brotherhood of Teamsters
Desk  202.624.6891
Fax    202.624.8973
Cell    202.437.2254

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