White House bullish on TPP approval, despite Clinton opposition

Hillary Clinton seems to prefer maintaining distance from the major administration policies.

Clinton’s HFT tax would target securities transactions with excessive levels of order cancellations, which her campaign said unnecessarily burdens markets and enables unfair and abusive trading strategies. In August, she received the endorsement of the worldwide Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers – which endorsed her in 2008 as well – despite objections from the union’s rank-and-file members.

Leading up to the October 13 primetime encounter in Las Vegas, Clinton has announced her opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, a project she said she was “inclined” to support back in 2010 as President Barack Obama’s secretary of state.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that all parties are using the Trans-Pacific Partnership for political gain, playing to their bases. I doubt it. My guess is that majority don’t believe what she is now saying.

Her support for trade pacts began softening during her time as a New York senator, when she voted for agreements with Chile, Singapore, Oman and Morocco but opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement. She said she anxious that the agreement didn’t crack down on currency manipulation or protect consumers from excessively high drug prices.

Another of Clinton’s opponents quickly accused her of lacking political courage after she revealed her concerns about the trade deal Wednesday ahead of the first Democratic debate next week in Las Vegas.

March 9, 2011, remarks at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum: “The United States is also making important progress on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which will bring together nine APEC economies in a cutting-edge, next generation trade deal, one that aims to eliminate all trade tariffs by 2015 while improving supply change, saving energy, enhancing business practices both through information technology and green technologies”. The finalized agreement is expected to include shorter patent protections on biologics.

Sen. Sanders, the independent from Vermont, has long opposed free trade deals. And since Biden is still in the administration, he, unfortunately, will have less room to pretend to hate TPP.Will anyone find Clinton’s position convincing? Furthermore, 71 percent of all Michigan made goods are now exported among TPP partners. That report was published Wednesday, just hours before Clinton revealed her new position on TPP.

Clinton supported the trade talks as secretary of state, calling it the “gold standard” for trade deals during a 2012 trip to Australia.

“Based on what I know so far, I can’t support this agreement”, Clinton said in a statement.

Apparently running for President demands its own “Hard Choices”, especially with a primary campaign seen by many as floundering.

In that vein, she said she opposed then-pending trade agreements with Korea, Columbia, and Panama. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, who was Clinton’s chief operating officer at State, continues to be one of the Obama administration’s most vocal supporters of the trade pact. In no time, a mashup video showing Clinton endorsing the TPP deal, over and over and over again, began crisscrossing social media. At present, 37% say they’d be enthusiastic about Clinton as their party’s standard bearer, down from 46% who felt this way in May.