It must be an interesting conversation to behold between the president and his people who are desperately trying to figure out how to prop up this piece of crap called the Trans Pacific Partnership. I really have some sympathy for these guys: how do you make something palatable without telling lies? There’s the list of ten lies/half-truths that just don’t hold water.
Then, there’s the bullshit about the deal not being negotiated in secret, leading one member of Congress to say “We know when we’re being suckered” and another to say, “My chief of staff who has a top secret security clearance can learn more about ISIS or Yemen than about this trade agreement”.
And, now, actual numbers–these are called FACTS–show that a cookie-cutter version of the TPP has cost the U.S. dearly in jobs.
Got it, solution, pesky facts notwithstanding: there’s always a last ditch claim…TPP will, in fact, end cancer and make everyone slim.
Back when the Korean Free Trade Agreement was negotiated, I wrote a lengthy open letter to a labor leader (and friend) about why the deal was bad, emphasizing the nonsense about jobs. Then, last year, when the data came out about the Korean deal impact, I wrote here that the the president’s promises that the deal with Korea would expand U.S. exports and create U.S. jobs just collapsed in the face of real evidence.
Happy Anniversary, Korea Free Trade Deal…you are as bad a deal now as you were back then, as Global Trade Watch demonstrated yesterday after the release of import data:
U.S. goods exports to Korea have dropped 6 percent, or $2.7 billion, under the Korea FTA’s first three years, while goods imports from Korea have surged 19 percent, or $11.3 billion (comparing the deal’s third year to the year before implementation). As a result, the U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea has swelled 104 percent, or more than $14 billion. The trade deficit increase equates to the loss of more than 93,000 American jobs in the first three years of the Korea FTA, counting both exports and imports, according to the trade-jobs ratio that the Obama administration used to project gains from the deal.“As if the odds for Fast Track were not already long enough, with most House Democrats and many GOP members stating opposition, today’s unveiling of a job-killing trade deficit
surge under the Korea FTA puts a few more nails in Fast Track’s coffin,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. “Who’s going to buy the argument about Fast Track and the TPP creating ‘more exports, more jobs’ when Obama’s only major trade deal, used as the TPP template, was sold under that very slogan and yet has done the opposite?”[emphasis added]
So, there’s still cancer and obesity. I have incredible faith in the White House’s ability to explain the connection–facts aren’t necessary, just a little passion.By the way, when the president argues that the TPP will end cancer and cure obesity, expect from the campaign trail the so-called “presumptive nominee” of the Democratic Party issuing a bold statement that, “while the TPP can’t be proven today to cure cancer and end obesity, I look forward to studying the issue closely because it’s so important for middle-class, hard-working Americans to know what I think about the potential, and I will ask my team of 200 people who are always poll-testing the American people to come up with my position, so I can have a conversation from my van with real Americans about the challenges of cancer and obesity.”
On the other hand, if you don’t want to be showered with bullshit, you can always try this.
