7,000 miles away, the President’s trade representative just quietly signed a massive, 5,544 page trade deal, with little fanfare from its supporters. Only months ago Congress voted to ‘fast-track’ this deal, despite not knowing its contents. Even today, questions to the Administration about what the deal would mean for our trade deficits, jobs, and wages, are met with silence. The Administration continues to leave the American people in the dark.
Early analyses suggest the TPP would cause real economic harm to America. A Tufts University Study found that it would cost nearly 450,000 American jobs by 2025. Even the pro-trade Peterson Institute says that by 2030, the TPP would cut American manufacturing growth by 20 percent, resulting in 121,000 fewer jobs.
The deal further fails to meaningfully address harmful foreign currency manipulation that has been hammering critically needed American manufacturing and closing mills and factories all around the country. Former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker has warned that currency manipulation can wipe out years of negotiations with our trading partners ‘in minutes.’ Just last week Ford announced it is leaving Japan because of currency manipulation and other non-tariff barriers. Yet the TPP contains no enforceable tools to prevent such market manipulations.
Alarmingly, the TPP also has a ‘living agreement’ provision, guaranteeing that once implemented, Congress will have ceded its Constitutional authority to negotiate trade deals, permitting the negotiated TPP to be changed by a new international commission in which the United States’ vote counts no more than the Sultan of Brunei’s. This commission could change the agreement with respect to areas such as membership, immigration, and environmental policy. For example, as Secretary of State Kerry has acknowledged, China could be added as a member, and Congress would be powerless to stop it. A living agreement is thus no agreement at all.
Perhaps these problems explain why we are not seeing politicians expressing support for this gargantuan agreement. A trade deal is a contract, and it must be one that puts American workers’ interests first, not the interests of global elites. While I’ve always supported trade, trade is not a religion. In many ways, trade has not been serving Americans well lately, and it’s time to be honest about that. It is little surprise the Administration is not showcasing today’s signing given its unpopularity with the American people. Every elected official, every candidate must be crystal clear about where they stand on the TPP. The American people deserve no less.
