Trump Is Shoving His Agenda Up Ryan's Ass

Queasy unease about the unhinged, impulsive Trump has been quietly driving international gold prices higher.

Gold investors have focused on two main views since Trump’s election in November: one seeing him as a wild card upending policy on everything from trade to alliances, and the other betting that he’ll boost U.S. growth, equities and the dollar. The administration’s opening days have been marked by protests, disputes about what constitutes a fact and assertions from Trump that he’ll put "America first."

"The market is now worrying about what would come out from the new administration," Bob Takai, chief executive officer and president of Sumitomo Corp. Global Research Co., said by phone from Tokyo. "In this kind of very unforeseeable environment, people want to buy gold," he said, adding that the biggest factors are the dollar and the outlook for interest rates.

Yesterday may not have been a good day for the establishments of the two corrupt political parties in Washington, but grassroots Americans on both sides of the usual partisan split were rejoicing that Trump signed an Executive Order withdrawing the U.S. from the TPP. The congressman with the most progressive voting record in the House, Mark Pocan (D-WI), told his constituents in Madison immediately after Trump signed on the dotted line that "The defeat of the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a testament to the power of grassroots organizing. A large coalition of labor unions, human rights organizations, and environmental and consumer advocacy groups joined together with Members of Congress to successfully fight against the TPP, which benefited multi-national corporations at the expense of the hard-working Americans. U.S. trade policy must create good-paying jobs here at home, reduce the trade deficit, expand access to affordable prescription drugs, and protect human rights. Whether President Trump’s trade policies will meet these standards or not remains to be seen. I will continue to hold the Administration accountable to ensure that our trade deals benefit working families not big corporations. It’s time we give up the failed trade policies of the past and adopt a new 21st century trade framework to grow American jobs and protect U.S. consumers."

Bernie Sanders had a similar response, remarking that the TPP is now "dead and gone." He added that "Now is the time to develop a new trade policy that helps working families, not just multinational corporations," probably not exactly in line with what Trump intends in the end; we'll have to see. "If President Trump is serious about a new policy to help American workers then I would be delighted to work with him. For the past 30 years, we have had a series of trade deals … which have cost us millions of decent-paying jobs and caused a ‘race to the bottom’ which has lowered wages for American workers."

Longtime TPP supporter Paul Ryan may have been disappointed but he had his head right up Trump's ass, leaving Republicans who want to fight for "free trade" on a limb by themselves. No more of this kind of thing from Ryan, not on trade. Hopefully the corporate wing of the Democratic Party will not try to pick up the banner and further alienate the party from most working class Americans.

Alliance for American Manufacturing President Scott Paul was also enthusiastic about Trump's move. "If today is any indication of the Trump administration’s focus on manufacturing, it is an encouraging start. Withdrawing from the TPP is a first step in a long road toward reforming trade policy and we look forward to working with the administration on finding solutions to create trade deals that keep jobs here in America." His organization offered 5 criticisms TPP opponents have been making since it reared it;s ugly head, compliments of the Obama-Clinton wing of the Democratic Party working in conjunction with the Ryan-McConnell-Bush wing of the Republican Party.

• The TPP would have lowered tariffs and some other non-tariff barriers to trade, but the agreement had no protection from currency manipulation.

• TPP text substantially weakens the rules of origin requirements in the NAFTA agreement. That means that goods from countries like China could have been incorporated in products assembled in the TPP region and thereby enjoy the benefits of tariff-free access to the U.S. market without sharing any of the responsibilities of TPP membership.

• According to the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), the United States’ GDP would be about 0.15 percent higher and there would be roughly 128,000 American jobs in 2032 if the Pacific-rim trade deal went through. None of those jobs were in manufacturing, though.

• The same ITC report finds that American manufactured goods exports would be more than $15 billion higher than without the agreement, but that gain would be eclipsed by the $39.2 billion bump in imports.

• The Peterson Institute for International Economics  said that 50,000 U.S. workers, most in manufacturing, could be out of a job each year during TPP's implemenation, and the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University cites nearly 450,000 lost manufacturing jobs.

The same organization is pushing heavily against another Paul Ryan/Mitch McConnell priority-- killing Buy American efforts-- that Trump appears to frown on. Ryan has successfully been purging Buy American provisions from procurement legislation. But he's now running into a bipartisan effort that looks to Trump to weigh in on their side. Illinois Republican Mike Bost in the House and Democrat Sherrod Brown in the Senate have been working together to thwart Ryan.

A number of House Republicans Trump last week in support of his own "Buy American, Hire American" initiative. In their letter, the Members note that a comprehensive infrastructure investment program "using domestically-produced iron, steel and other manufactured goods is keeping with the intent of America’s longstanding domestic content laws." This flies right in the face on Ryan's efforts to quietly remove this kinds of restrictions. "Many infrastructure programs," the Republicans wrote to Trump, "are not subject to any Buy America procurement preference laws. Where such procurement preferences are applicable, these laws are often not administered effectively-- resulting in hard-earned tax dollars leaking overseas and supporting job creation in China and other countries. These gaps in coverage have resulted in major public works projects being constructed with massive amounts of foreign steel and other imported products."

And Sherrod Brown announced, on the same day they sent their letter that he intends to introduce legislation to apply Buy America rules to all taxpayer-funded infrastructure and public works projects on Monday, Trump’s first full workday in office, something McConnell wasn't looking forward to. Brown has kept Trump in the loop about his intentions.

It’s a very good sign that bipartisan backing is building for Buy America. These commonsense preferences ensure that taxpayer dollars remain in the United States, helping to create new jobs, boost the economy and make America more competitive. Manufacturing jobs increase 33 percent per dollar spent on public works projects when Buy America provisions are applied.

There’s also major support for Buy America-- nearly three-fourths of voters say large infrastructure projects that use tax money should be built with American materials and workers.

But there’s proof in the projects as well, and there’s no better case study than the comparison of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and Tappan Zee Bridge in New York.

Back in 2004, then-California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger opted out of federal funding so the Bay Bridge could be built with Chinese-made steel. His argument was that it would save some money.

That proved so, so wrong. Sending the steel construction overseas created an array of problems that cost the state tons of taxpayer dollars and delayed the project for 12 years. When the Bay Bridge was finally completed, it went $3.9 billion OVER budget-- and there are still questions about its safety.

Meanwhile, the new Tappan Zee Bridge in New York is being built with Buy America preferences. Its total cost is expected to be $3.9 billion, and while construction is still ongoing, it is making solid progress-- and thousands of American workers have been hired to complete it.

Also of note: New York could be among the states leading the way on Buy America. Gov. Andrew Cuomo unveiled a plan last week that would require the state government to apply Buy America to any purchases for goods and services costing more than $100,000.

This issue-- demagoguing on it and taking all the credit-- is right up Trump's alley, of course. Ryan and Miss McConnell will just have to swallow hard and bite the pillow. Maybe they can commiserate with Hillary.

How Obama Traded Away His Legacy

by Gaius Publius

I'm about to say the obvious, but with so many dots getting connected in this post-election, pre-Trump interregnum, I want to connect just these two and let the obvious sink in.

Obama's push for TPP not only cost Clinton the election (among other factors, of course), it very likely cost Obama his legacy — all of it.

Barack Obama has a number of what his supporters call "legacy achievements" — meant positively (I would add a number of inverse-legacy achievements as well) — but chief among them, first in the list, is always the ACA, "Obamacare." Whatever its demerits, and they are many, it did accomplish a narrow task — providing medical insurance, in some form, to millions of Americans who didn't have it before.

That legacy achievement is about to be stripped away, all because Donald Trump, with a fully Republican Congress behind him, has been elected president.

And what caused that Republican takeover of the White House? Again, many factors, but chief among them, in my estimation and in the estimation of a number of writers, is Obama's relentless push to pass TPP even as Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton was running to inhabit, in effect, Obama's third term — and even as both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders achieved or nearly achieved unpredicted upsets running against "free" trade economics.

Let that sink in, because it's not going to be said in too many public Democratic places. Obama's relentless push to pass TPP in part cost Clinton the election and in full will cost Obama his signature ("legacy") accomplishment.

Again, you won't hear many Democrats say this, because the "free" trade wing of the Democratic Party is still in charge (of the Party, not the country). And that wing, which includes almost all Clinton supporters in the Party — including Tim Kaine, her choice for vice-president, and including Tom Perez, Obama's "not Keith Ellison" choice for DNC chair — is still in favor of job-killing trade deals. This intra-party dynamic, I predict, will keep them out of power for a generation, unless the Obama-Clinton wing is ousted from party leadership in something like the next six months. That's possible, of course, but it doesn't seem likely to happen.

(And before you say, or hear, that Perez was forced to support TPP because, as Secretary of Labor, his boss supported it, consider that Perez didn't feel as compelled to support his boss's position on the recent UN condemnation of Israeli settlements.)

Supporting my contention is this, written by Lori Wallach, head of Global Trade Watch at Public Citizen, and Murshed Zaheed, political director of CREDO Action. The whole piece is worth a read; they nail it.

TPP: How Obama Traded Away His Legacy

Donald Trump is preparing to wipe President Barack Obama's legacy from existence. The Affordable Care Act, Dodd-Frank and protections for the environment and immigrants all are set to disappear in no part small part thanks to President Obama himself and his relentless advocacy for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) right through Election Day.

And President Obama still won't face the sorry truth, this week declaring that he would have beaten Trump if he had been the candidate. After years of siding with corporate America to pass various job-killing trade deals over the opposition of congressional Democrats, he announced that it was "nonsense" that anyone should have the view that "Democrats have somehow abandoned the white working class."

Yet in fact, post-election polling and exit polls confirm that Trump flipped decisive states because he connected with voters' fury about job-killing trade deals.

Trump's omnipresent attacks on "rigged" trade deals resonated with communities devastated by mass job offshoring. Polling shows that Americans viewed President Obama's TPP as a corporate power grab that would cost more jobs, lower wages and raise medicine prices.

Trump won Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania by 23,000, 11,000 and 68,000 votes, respectively. The number of people in those states certified as having lost jobs to trade since the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, is 78,331, 159,252 and 182,017 under just one government program that captures a fraction of trade-related job loss.

Notice the mention of NAFTA above. People have long memories when it comes to NAFTA, especially people out of work. NAFTA is almost iconic for "Democrat-sponsored job-killing trade deal."

About my comment that Clinton was running for "Obama's third term":

Meanwhile, President Obama's closing argument for Clinton at a Michigan rally the day before the election was to "continue this journey of progress," effectively promising a third term of an Obama presidency that had spent the past two years prioritizing the implementation of a trade deal despised not only by working class Midwesterners, but the entire Democratic Party base.

That clearly didn't sit well with Rust Belt voters.

My own thought about the election, one of them anyway, is this: Voters didn't just vote for "change" in some vague dissatisfied way. Many voters specifically repudiated "Clintonism" — Democratic Party-sponsored neoliberalism — when they voted last November. Evidence for that is this — Clinton's very high unpopularity, which cannot simply be chalked up to 90s-era right-wing smears. Too many younger voters, for whom the 90s occurred in the time of Alexander the Great (or at least Ronald Reagan), repudiated her candidacy as well, especially during the primary.

Why Did Obama Risk His Legacy for TPP?

To answer that, one must connect different dots. Here's two of them, via the New York Times:

With High-Profile Help, Obama Plots Life After Presidency

...The dinner in the private upstairs dining room of the White House went so late that Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn billionaire, finally suggested around midnight that President Obama might like to go to bed.

“Feel free to kick us out,” Mr. Hoffman recalled telling the president.

But Mr. Obama was just getting started. “I’ll kick you out when it’s time,” he replied. He then lingered with his wife, Michelle, and their 13 guests — among them the novelist Toni Morrison, the hedge fund manager Marc Lasry and the Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr — well past 2 a.m.

Mr. Obama “seemed incredibly relaxed,” said another guest, the writer Malcolm Gladwell. He recalled how the group, which also included the actress Eva Longoria and Vinod Khosla, a founder of Sun Microsystems, tossed out ideas about what Mr. Obama should do after he leaves the White House.

Publicly, Mr. Obama betrays little urgency about his future. Privately, he is preparing for his postpresidency with the same fierce discipline and fund-raising ambition that characterized the 2008 campaign that got him to the White House.

The long-running dinner this past February is part of a methodical effort taking place inside and outside the White House as the president, first lady and a cadre of top aides map out a postpresidential infrastructure and endowment they estimate could cost as much as $1 billion. The president’s aides did not ask any of the guests for library contributions after the dinner, but a number of those at the table could be donors in the future.

The $1 billion — double what George W. Bush raised for his library and its various programs — would be used for what one adviser called a “digital-first” presidential library loaded with modern technologies, and to establish a foundation with a worldwide reach. ...

...Including construction costs, Mr. Obama’s associates set a goal of raising at least $800 million — enough money, they say, to avoid never-ending fund-raising. One top adviser said that $800 million was a floor rather than a ceiling.

There are many more high-dollar names in the article, including these:

So far, Mr. Obama has raised just over $5.4 million from 12 donors, with gifts ranging from $100,000 to $1 million. Michael J. Sacks, a Chicago businessman, gave $666,666. Fred Eychaner, the founder of Chicago-based Newsweb Corp., which owns community newspapers and radio stations, donated $1 million. Mark T. Gallogly, a private equity executive, and James H. Simons, a technology entrepreneur, each contributed $340,000 to a foundation set up to oversee development of the library.

Those two dots, of course, are Obama's post-electoral plans and its price. So, did Barack Obama push so hard for TPP in order to feather Hillary Clinton's electoral nest, the Democratic Party's electoral nest ... or his own post-electoral future?

As a one-time mayor of Chicago, Hizzoner himself, used to say, "Youth wants to know." And so do the rest of us, though the answer seems fairly (as I said in this essay's first sentence) obvious. Hillary Clinton is off to a post-electoral retirement in semi-disgrace; the Democratic Party seems doomed to wander the wilderness for a good long time; and Obama ... he sails into a well-financed, almost golden, future sunset.

GP
 

TPP Is Dead, and People Power Killed It

Is TPP "just stunned" too. Not likely.

by Gaius Publius

Perhaps you've been reading about the demise of TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership "trade" agreement. I put trade in quotes because that's what it's called, but that's not what it is. TPP is, in fact, a monopoly protection scheme (think pharmaceutical patents and intellectual property), since we already have few or no trade barriers with the largest nations that were going to sign it.

Rumors of the death of this agreement have been circulating since the election, and I've been watching them carefully, wondering if by magic the deal would re-emerge. I'm now certain it will not. Some people, like Wall Street banker, Obama cabinet selector, and U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman, prefer to think the deal's not dead, just sleeping — or in Froman's phrasing, in "purgatory" and not in hell.

It's not sleeping; it's dead. And contrary to rumor, Trump didn't kill it. You did.

Lori Wallach, who is as cautious about this treaty as anyone I know, and as knowledgeable, just sent this to her list (my emphasis):

TPP RIP

Statement of Lori Wallach, Director, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch on the Demise of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the Lame-Duck Session of Congress

The news that the White House and Republican congressional leaders have given up on passing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is welcome. That the TPP would be defeated by Congress if brought to a vote signals that Trojan-horse “trade” agreements that expand corporate power and shrink Americans’ wages are simply no longer politically viable. People power beat the united forces of a U.S. president, the Republican congressional leaders and the entire corporate lobby.

The unremitting push by the Obama administration for the TPP right through this election helped to elect Donald Trump, but Trump has not derailed the TPP – people power united across borders did that. Six years of relentless, strategic campaigning by an international movement of people from the TPP countries united across borders to fight against corporate power is why the TPP is all but dead.

Thanks to years of campaigning by people across this country, since its February 2016 signing, the TPP could not garner a majority of support in the U.S. House of Representatives. And it was clear that the TPP was in trouble in 2015, when Fast Track authority for the TPP barely squeaked through Congress.

The TPP’s signing was delayed for years by vibrant civil society movements in other TPP nations that pushed their governments to reject TPP terms expanding investor rights, monopolies for pharmaceutical firms, financial deregulation and other threats. That meant time to organize, organize, organize. Over those years, millions of Americans helped to educate and organize their friends, families, and colleagues to demand their representatives opposed the TPP.

That the TPP pushed by the most powerful forces in the world is not being implemented represents the American public’s resounding rejection of trade policies that not only failed to live up to its proponents’ promises over the past 20 years, but caused real damage to working people and the environment.

The only way forward is to create new rules of the road for globalization that put people and the planet first while harvesting the benefits of expanded trade. And we must roll back the existing “trade” deals and extreme investor-state dispute settlement regime that have caused people and the planet so much damage. The coalition that stopped the TPP is powerful and united and will fight forward to deliver that change. And, we will be ready to take on any attempt to revive the TPP or advance other corporate-friendly trade pacts based on the same failed and outdated model of trade.

For a review of the six-year international campaign against the TPP, please read https://medium.com/@citizenstrade/no-trump-didnt-kill-the-tpp-progressives-did-884b534542d#.175otqc1j

Wallach makes several important points that should not be missed.

One, your opposition to corporate "trade" giveaways to TPP gave Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump an issue they could run and win on. You did that.

And  two, Obama's completely understandable but relentless push for TPP in the face of this massive populist opposition helped sink the Clinton candidacy, absent her full-throated opposition to it. The full-throated version never came.

And third, the next job is to roll back NAFTA. Trump has already promised that, using the threat of the Withdrawal Clause, which his team seems to have discovered. From "Donald Trump's Contract with the American Voter" (pdf; my emphasis):

Seven actions to protect American workers:

★ FIRST, I will announce my intention to renegotiate NAFTA or withdraw from the deal under Article 2205.
★ SECOND, I will announce our withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
[...]

Here's clause 2205 in full, in case you haven't discovered it yet yourself. From the NAFTA text:

Article 2205: Withdrawal

A Party may withdraw from this Agreement six months after it provides written notice of withdrawal to the other Parties. If a Party withdraws, the Agreement shall remain in force for the remaining Parties.

Did you know we could have withdrawn from NAFTA all along? Clinton and Obama both knew it. Then, somehow, that fact was never mentioned again.

But onward, and congratulations! Thanks to you, TPP is no longer resting. It has joined the choir invisible. RIP.

GP
 

Trump Administration... Reading The Tea Leaves

On Thursday the NY Times ran a piece by Eric Lipton about what a bonanza a Trump administration is going to be for K Street lobbyists and other insiders he railed against during his fraudulent campaign. Yesterday, they revamped , expanded and updated it and ran it again. On Thursday, Lipton wrote that "Corporate America is both excited and anxious about the prospect of Mr. Trump’s presidency, seeing great opportunity to shape the agenda after an extended period of frustration over gridlock in Congress. With Republicans poised to control both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, [top corporate lobbyist Trent] Lott said he had not seen such a chance to help clients since he left the Senate in 2007-- whether by making changes to the federal tax code for Amazon or increasing military spending on new ships for Huntington Ingalls Industries. 'Trump has pledged to change things in Washington — about draining the swamp,' said Mr. Lott, who now works at Squire Patton Boggs, a law and lobbying firm. 'He is going to need some people to help guide him through the swamp-- how do you get in and how you get out? We are prepared to help do that.'" Apparently Lott is helping redefine the meaning of the word "swamp."

Across Washington, lobbyists and trade association executives were busy reviewing their priorities, which include repealing financial regulations instituted during the Obama administration, pushing for cuts in corporate taxes, overhauling President Obama’s signature health care plan and spending billions on roads, bridges and other infrastructure.

“On these significant issues, now that you have one party controlling the executive branch and the legislature, it is more likely they will be addressed,” said Marc S. Lampkin, managing partner of the lobbying firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, whose roster of more than 135 clients includes the drug maker AbbVie and the insurance company Zurich Financial Services.

Mr. Lampkin, a former Republican aide on Capitol Hill, had fielded so many phone calls on Wednesday from his clients that his voice had turned raspy with fatigue. “There is a lot of pent-up demand to break the gridlock in Washington,” he said.

Prominent Washington lobbyists also said that Mr. Trump would arrive in the capital with a much smaller contingent of veteran policy advisers than Hillary Clinton would have brought-- and they see that relative inexperience as an opening. So they are prepared to draft legislation and regulations to quietly pass to allies on Capitol Hill and in the White House.

It is an opportunity that comes after a period of decline in lobbying revenues for many major firms. Total lobbying spending in Washington, after climbing consistently for nearly two decades began to dip in 2011, as congressional action slowed with divided government.

“Trump’s management style and policy approach to the campaign implies he is going to set big broad ‘beautiful’ direction and the elected lawmakers will take significant cuts at trying to flesh it out and reflect his will,” said Bruce P. Mehlman, the founder of Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas, which has more than 70 clients ranging from Adobe, the software company, to Walmart.

Yesterday Lipton bored down. "Trump," he wrote, "who campaigned against the corrupt power of special interests, is filling his transition team with some of the very sort of people who he has complained have too much clout in Washington: corporate consultants and lobbyists... Trump was swept to power in large part by white working-class voters who responded to his vow to restore the voices of forgotten people, ones drowned out by big business and Wall Street. But in his transition to power, some of the most prominent voices will be those of advisers who come from the same industries for which they are being asked to help set the regulatory groundwork." Lipton spelled it out and listed the names and affiliations. Read it if you want to puke. It's too depressing to republish.

And yet, one of the top priorities of this whole vile, repulsive network of special interests has been the TPP-- which is being widely reported as DOA. There are reports that now even Obama has given up on the idea of trying to pass the accursed corporate trade agenda in the lame duck session where most Democrats are against it and many Republicans are loathe to make a move this early against Trump. Good riddance, TPP. We'll see if Paul Ryan, the New Dems and the lobbyists can bring it back.

TPP Has Picked Up a Powerful Enemy — Black Lives Matter

The thirteen Democratic Senators who helped Obama break the filibuster on Fast Track. Some, for example, Ron Wyden and Patty Murray, run as progressives back home. One, still senator and current VP candidate Tim Kaine, says he's now opposed to TPP, which the Fast Track vote was meant to enable.

by Gaius Publius

President Obama and all of his corporatist buddies, including some, but not all, in the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), are hell-bent on passing the TPP in the lame duck session of Congress just after the election but prior to Obama's leaving office. It's reasonable to speculate why, and we did so here:

TPP, the Democratic Party, and Obama's Presidential Library

As to the timing, the choice is obvious. First, there's the unusual composition of a lame duck Congress. As Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, wrote recently in The Hill (my emphasis):

So [TPP] is looking like a very close vote. (For procedural and political reasons, Obama will not bring it to a vote unless he is sure he has the necessary votes). Now let's look at one special group of Representatives who can swing this vote: the actual lame-ducks, i.e., those who will be in office only until Jan. 3. It depends partly on how many lose their election on Nov. 8, but the average number of representatives who left after the last three elections was about 80.

Most of these people will be looking for a job, preferably one that can pay them more than $1 million a year. From the data provided by OpenSecrets.org, we can estimate that about a quarter of these people will become lobbyists. (An additional number will work for firms that are clients of lobbyists).

So there you have it: It is all about corruption, and this is about as unadulterated as corruption gets in our hallowed democracy, other than literal cash under a literal table. These are the people whom Obama needs to pass this agreement, and the window between Nov. 9 and Jan. 3 is the only time that they are available to sell their votes to future employers without any personal political consequences whatsoever. The only time that the electorate can be rendered so completely irrelevant, if Obama can pull this off.

The lame duck session, in other words, is the only time when Obama and the corporatists in both parties can appeal to House members and senators who are still in office, yet completely untethered from any responsibility to anything but their personal ambition and future paychecks — completely untethered, since they will likely never face voters again in another election.

There's a second reason as well. If Obama pulls this off, getting the TPP passed, it's Obama's trade deal, not the next president's (though that president, should she or he be opposed, could immediately execute the Withdrawal clause and renegotiate).

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in 2008 each promising to use the threat of unilateral withdrawal to force renegotiation of NAFTA.

Remember, it only took 28 Democrats (or "Democrats") in the House to pass Fast Track when it came up for a final vote, and only 13 Democratic senators.

Democratic Pro-Fast Track Votes in the House

Here's the House list, in order by state. I've highlighted a few of the names:

Terri Sewell (AL-07)
Susan Davis (CA-53)
Sam Farr (CA-20)
Jim Costa (CA-16)
Ami Bera (CA-07)
Scott Peters (CA-52)
Jared Polis (CO-02)
James Himes (CT-04)
Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-23)
Mike Quigley (IL-05)
John Delaney (MD-06)
Brad Ashford (NE-02)
Gregory Meeks (NY-05)
Kathleen Rice (NY-04)
Earl Blumenauer (OR-03)
Kurt Schrader (OR-05)
Suzanne Bonamici (OR-01)
Jim Cooper (TN-05)
Rubén Hinojosa (TX-15)
Eddie Johnson (TX-30)
Henry Cuellar (TX-28)
Beto O'Rourke (TX-16)
Gerald Connolly (VA-11)
Donald Beyer (VA-08)
Rick Larsen (WA-02)
Suzan DelBene (WA-01)
Derek Kilmer (WA-06)
Ron Kind (WI-03)

These 28 Democratic Yes votes were needed because 50 Republicans voted No. The bolded names — Earl Blumenauer, Suzanne Bonamici, Suzan DelBene — claim to be progressives when they campaign back home. The bold-italicized representatives — Terri Sewell, Gregory Meeks, and Eddie Bernice Johnson — are CBC members.

Democratic Pro-Fast Track Votes in the Senate

On the Senate side, 13 Democrats voted to make sure TPP would get a Fast Track vote by voting to close debate (voting for cloture):

Michael Bennet, Colorado
Maria Cantwell, Washington
Tom Carper, Delaware
Chris Coons, Delaware
Dianne Feinstein, California
Heidi Heitkamp, North Dakota
Tim Kaine, Virginia
Claire McCaskill, Missouri
Patty Murray, Washington
Bill Nelson, Florida
Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire
Mark Warner, Virginia
Ron Wyden, Oregon

In both houses of Congress, these were the barest of margins — 218 Yes votes in the House and 60 Yes votes in the Senate, in each case exactly the minimum required for passage. Another indication of how toxic this "trade" bill is. No Democrat dared touch it who didn't want to or have to.

Black Lives Matter and the TPP

And now the TPP has become even more toxic, since the Black Lives Matter (BLM) social-justice movement has endorsed the anti-TPP position. Politico Pro has this (sub. required; my emphasis):

Obama's latest TPP foe: Black Lives Matter
By Andrew Hanna
Monday, Oct. 31, 2016

The Obama administration will face an unexpected adversary as it gears up for what could be a blockbuster lame-duck fight over the Trans-Pacific Partnership: the Black Lives Matter movement.

The group — best known best for its protests of police shootings of African-Americans — has joined the fray over the Asian Pacific trade deal as part of its growing focus on economic issues, contending the pact would lead to greater racial injustice. It ties past trade deals to the closures of factories that have hurt black workers disproportionately and increased black poverty.

Its involvement could influence the votes of a handful of wavering Democrats, should Congress tackle TPP during the lame duck.

"There are groups that are going to pay a lot of close attention to what they say, especially the Congressional Black Caucus," said Bill Reinsch, a fellow at the Stimson Center and close trade-vote watcher.

Only a small band of 28 House Democrats voted to give the president fast track authority to complete TPP, including three members of the Congressional Black Caucus: Reps. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) and Terri Sewell (D-Ala.). A fourth black caucus member, Republican Mia Love of Utah, also voted for fast-track authority.

With anti-trade fervor whipped into a fever pitch by the presidential election campaign, their votes are considered key to passage of the pact — and all are under increasing pressure to abandon the president should the pact come to a ratification vote.

The pretend reason, of course, for TPP support is support for a major legacy "want" by the first black president. The pro-Clinton members of the Democratic Platform Committee, for example, resisted to the end any explicit language about TPP on the grounds that the Party must support its president.

Democrats Prioritize Party Unity Over Including Stand Against TPP In Platform

Members of the Democratic National Convention Platform Committee shot down an attempt to include specific opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal in the platform, despite the fact that both Democratic presidential candidates have taken positions against the TPP.

The attempt failed because members appointed by Hillary Clinton and DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz claimed it was improper to oppose the TPP when President Barack Obama fervently believes in the agreement. However, by putting party unity before taking a firm stand against the trade agreement, the door was left open for Clinton to go back to supporting the TPP, which was the case when she was secretary of state.

“It is hard for me to understand why Secretary Clinton’s delegates won’t stand behind Secretary Clinton’s positions in the party’s platform,” Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said....

Even platform committee chair, Representative E.J. Cummings [normally progressive on trade issues], chose to vote against the resolution. He, too, bragged about not voting for trade agreements.

“I don’t want to do anything as he ends his term to undercut the president of the United States. I’m just not going to do it. And that’s where I stand,” Cummings proclaimed.

That's the pretend reason — supporting the first black president — for most of them anyway. The real reason is different and not unexpected — money and everything money can buy. The Democratic Party as it's currently configured exists to enable the fire hose flow of corporate and big-wealth dollars into its coffers. Opposing that flow gets you the "Sanders treatment," but I'm not spilling any new beans in saying that.

This move by Black Lives Matter takes away the pretend reason and thus puts some careers at risk. BLM has high visibility at the moment. It will be worth watching the result, the actual TPP vote, as this plays out later.

What to Watch For in the Lame Duck

Once the Democrats figure out how many Republicans will defect from their leadership in each house of Congress (there were 50 House Republican defections last time plus six not voting, and five Senate defections plus two not voting), they'll know how many Democrats will have to "take one for the team" — vote Yes on TPP so others with reputations to protect (like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi) don't have to.

The numbers needed to pass TPP in the Senate have changed this time. Only 51 votes are needed there now (that's part of what "fast track" means). Finding 50 No votes in the Senate is not an impossible task, but it's a very high bar — depending on the way Republicans vote, as few as four "Democrats" like Ron Wyden could guarantee passage.

So the greatest vulnerability for TPP is in the House. Can Democrats again muster something like 28 pro-corporate votes? Which Democrats will chose to take the fall a second time? Corporatists like Ron Kind will eagerly comply. But will Oregon's Earl Blumenauer (bow-tie bicycle guy)? Will CBC members Sewell and Johnson, with BLM lobbying hard against them? Or will other House Democrats be needed (and willing) to take the fall so Pelosi can move TPP across the line?

Again, Fast Track passed the House with zero votes to spare. What if the Republican opposition — including the opposition to Speaker Ryan in the wake of the Trump debacle — swells to more than 50? This could be a very close vote.

TPP, Obama's Legacy and "A Glide Path to His Life as an Ex-President"

The Politico article quoted above helpfully notes this about Obama's legacy:

If successfully pushed through Congress, ratification of the trade accord would be the last major piece of legislation of the Obama presidency. The prospect that black lawmakers and activists could help to hand him a defeat is complicated by Obama's position as the first black president.

"This is part of President Obama's legacy," said [CBC member Gregory] Meeks.

Will Barack Obama get his legacy wish, along with his legacy library and foundation? The New York Times a few weeks ago told us this about Obama's future plans and needs:

Publicly, Mr. Obama betrays little urgency about his future. Privately, he is preparing for his postpresidency with the same fierce discipline and fund-raising ambition that characterized the 2008 campaign that got him to the White House.

The long-running dinner this past February is part of a methodical effort taking place inside and outside the White House as the president, first lady and a cadre of top aides map out a postpresidential infrastructure and endowment they estimate could cost as much as $1 billion. The president’s aides did not ask any of the guests for library contributions after the dinner, but a number of those at the table could be donors in the future....

So far, Mr. Obama has raised just over $5.4 million from 12 donors, with gifts ranging from $100,000 to $1 million. Michael J. Sacks, a Chicago businessman, gave $666,666. Fred Eychaner, the founder of Chicago-based Newsweb Corp., which owns community newspapers and radio stations, donated $1 million. Mark T. Gallogly, a private equity executive, and James H. Simons, a technology entrepreneur, each contributed $340,000 to a foundation set up to oversee development of the library.

The real push for donations, foundation officials said, will come after Mr. Obama leaves the White House.

Shailagh Murray, a senior adviser, oversees an effort inside the White House to keep attention on Mr. Obama’s future and to ensure that his final 17 months in office, barring crises, serve as a glide path to his life as an ex-president.

"A glide path to his life as an ex-president." I guess you could call him, after his 2008 trademark, "ever hopeful and looking for change." Interesting times indeed.

GP
 

TPP Is a Monopoly Protection Scheme, the Exact Opposite of a "Free Trade" Deal

A little confusing, but follow the gray lines. The above figure illustrates how the duration of the copyright that the Walt Disney company claims in Steamboat Willie — marked by the solid gray line — has twice approached expiration — by the dashed gray line. In both instances, federal lawmakers amended the Copyright Act to extend the duration, both of copyrighted works generally and works, such as Steamboat Willie, that predated the amendments (source; click to enlarge). In 2023, expect copyright protection in general to be extended again. This law is colloquially called "The Mouse Protection Act."

by Gaius Publius

Normally when we think of "free trade," us lay people, we think of removing barriers to the exchange of goods and services. Removing barriers is the "free" part of "free trade." Of course, there really is no such thing as a "no barriers" market, since even the simplest of markets always has rules, and those who write the rules are "picking winners and losers" by definition.

Consider, for example, a flea market held in the parking lot of a local fairground on a Saturday. To participate, you have to register for a space with the organizers (the parking lot isn't infinitely long or wide), set up an approved tent or table, and usually, if your goods are sold by weight or volume, have your weights and measuring devices certified by the organizers as honest.

All of the restrictions above place limits on the "market" — put it under control of the organizers — but consider for a minute just the last one, certified weights and measures. How is that not "picking winners and losers"? Winners — Vendors with honest scales. Losers — Vendors who cheat their customers.

Or consider a flea market without that requirement. Winners — Vendors who cheat their customers. Losers — Vendors with honest scales.

A lot has been written, in fact, about the non-existence, by definition, of anything resembling a "free market," including much by the writer Masaccio (main site here).

Monopolies and "Free Trade"

But that point aside, let's consider TPP from another standpoint. Monopolies are the enemies of so-called "free trade" since, by definition, they destroy competition and invert the usual assumptions about pricing power. In a well-supplied market, a market with much available product, pricing power is with the buyers, the customers, since it is they who, in the aggregate, set the limits of "what the market will bear."

But in a market in which the supply of something essential for life — water, food, life-saving medical supplies and care, even apartment housing in an old-style "company town" — is not "well-supplied," but is instead controlled and constrained by a single supplier or a small cartel of non-competing suppliers, that's just the opposite of a "free market." It's in fact the least free a market can get.

Thus it is with TPP. Very little actual trade will be freed up if TPP is passed, since barriers to "trade" among the many of the potential signing nations are nearly non-existent.

On the other hand, one of the most important outcomes of  theTPP will be the destruction of a competitive market, the one for life-saving drugs and other "intellecual property." For these products, the TPP raises barriers as surely as tariffs would do.

Economist Dean Baker calls the TPP a "protectionist" agreement. Baker (my emphasis):

The TPP And Free Trade: Time To Retake The English Language

The proponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are planning to do a full court press in the lame duck session of Congress following the election. We will be bombarded with speeches and columns from President Obama and other illustrious figures telling us how it is important to approve the TPP for a variety of reasons.

We can be certain that one of the reasons will be the inherent virtues of free trade. They will not be telling the truth.

The TPP is not about free trade. It does little to reduce tariffs and quotas for the simple reason that these barriers are already very low. In fact, the United States already has trade deals with six of the other eleven countries in the TPP. This is why the non-partisan United States International Trade Commission (ITC) estimated that when the full gains from the TPP are realized in 2032, they will come to just 0.23 percent of GDP. This is a bit more than a normal month’s growth.

Again, the full gains from the TPP will come to just 0.23% of GDP — one month's growth. So what is going on with the TPP? Why do people like Barack Obama (and Pfizer, etc.) want it to pass so badly? Among the reasons is this one:

[T]he TPP goes far in the opposite direction, increasing protectionism in the form of stronger and longer patent and copyright protection. These forms of protection for prescription drugs, software, and other products, often raise the price by a factor of a hundred or more above the free market price. This makes them equivalent to tariffs of several thousand percent.

These forms of protection do serve a purpose in promoting innovation and creative work, but we have other more efficient mechanisms to accomplish this goal. Furthermore, the fact that they serve a purpose doesn’t mean they are not protectionist. 

Tilting the playing field toward Money, a scheme that protects the holders of intellectual property ... forever, if they can get away with it. For example, consider this:

Copyright Length And The Life Of Mickey Mouse

Last week, we reported on Rep. Zoe Lofgren's statement that copyright law has become equal to the life of Mickey Mouse. Tom Bell has a couple of recent posts exploring issues related to Mickey Mouse and copyright, that seem worth exploring, given Rep. Lofgren's recognition of this fact. While he notes (as we have) that there's ample evidence to suggest that the earliest Mickey Mouse cartoons really are in the public domain, he first explores how the length of copyright has followed the age of Mickey Mouse:

Bottom line: Until the current, neo-liberal capital-protecting political regime falls or is taken over, Mickey Mouse will never be in the public domain.

What About a "Free Market" for Doctors Too?

Baker finds something else significant about our so-called "free trade" agreements — they're very selective about which markets are "freed." Consider, for example, the market for relatively powerless manufacturing labor and the market for much more powerful (and wealthy) doctors.

Baker:

The other point to be made about free trade and protectionism is that our push for free trade has always been very selective. NAFTA and other trade deals were explicitly designed to make it as easy as possible for U.S. corporations to manufacture goods in the developing world and ship them back to the United States. ...

But [while] manufacturing workers in the developing world are willing to work for much lower pay than manufacturing workers in the United States, so are doctors in the developing world.

Unlike manufacturing workers, doctors are powerful enough to get protection. It is not generally possible for a doctor trained in another country to practice medicine in the United States unless they pass a U.S. residency program — for which there is a strict quota on foreign trained students. As a result of this restriction, doctors in the United States earn on average twice as much as doctors in Canada, Germany, and other wealthy countries. This protectionism costs the United States roughly $100 billion a year (around $700 per family) in higher health care costs.

If our trade negotiators actually were interested in “free trade,” they would have constructed a system whereby foreign trained doctors could be certified as meeting U.S. standards. They would then have the same freedom to practice as any doctor born and trained in the United States.

Again, a straight-up wealth protection scheme. Baker goes on to note that the "market for doctors" really is a trade issue, not an immigration one, since many German, Canadian, French and Indian doctors could most like get into the U.S. and get jobs — as waiters, for example — they just couldn't work as doctors.

Baker's conclusion is exactly right, that calling a deal like the TPP a "free trade agreement" is just propaganda: "When reporters call the TPP a 'free trade' deal, they are acting as advocates, not reporters. The TPP is a protectionist pact for those at the top who are worried that free trade will undermine their income — like it did for those at the middle and bottom."

There's No "Free Market" for Political Parties Either

I think if Democrats think that the Trumpist revolt against "free trade" deals is just an expression of anti-immigrant racism — and that they can pass TPP in the lame duck session without consequences — there may be a surprise in store for them. After all, there's no "free market" for U.S. political parties either — we have a carefully protected two-party monopoly — and there are only two ways to disrupt and revolt against it that I can think of. Neither is pretty, neither is orderly, and neither will be good for Democrats.

Forewarned? Let's hope so. The lame duck session is just weeks away.

GP
 

"Final Death Blow" to Canada-EU Trade Deal as Delegates Hold Firm Against It

One of the many protests against the TTIP and CETA trade deals, this on in Berlin

by Gaius Publius

In our coverage recently of the European mass protests against the so-called "free trade" agreement TTIP, and its demise, you may have noticed another trade deal mentioned alongside it, something called CETA, the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement. CETA is a "trade" deal being negotiated between Canada and the European Union. As you can see from the image above, those mass protests in Europe targeted both deals, not just the one (TTIP) involving the U.S. Even though it doesn't involve us, doesn't mean the Europeans are any more in favor of it. They're not.

As you know if you clicked the first link above, TTIP is basically dead. TTIP is one of the three cornerstone corporate-friendly deals the U.S. corporate elite is using their well-funded office-holders to enact, the other two being TPP (the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal) and TiSA, the Trade in Services Agreement, which is actually the real killer. (TiSA, for example, would force the fast-tracking of imported non-union, very-low-wage foreign labor. Picture, if you will, the rapid demise of construction unions under TiSA.)

The death of CETA, if it holds, strikes another blow at the heart of the pro-corporate globalist project. This means that of three "trade" deals the Europeans are involved in, two have been killed. This leaves only TiSA, and while that one is much less further along, it's looking more and more possible that the Europeans will do us a favor and kill it too — leaving only TPP standing. Regarding TPP, we may be on our own.

From Lauren McCauley at Common Dreams on CETA:

'Final Death Blow' to CETA as Delegates Hold Firm Against Pro-Corporate Deal

"It's time for a fundamental shift toward international agreements that put people and the planet before corporate profits. That's the message from Europe today."

Dealing what campaigners say is the final "death blow" to the pro-corporate Canada-European Union trade deal, negotiations collapsed on Friday after representatives from the Belgian region of Wallonia refused to agree to a deal that continues ignore democracy in favor of multi-national corporations.

Canada's International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland reportedly walked out of talks with the Wallonia delegation, which had ruled to maintain their veto against the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) after the parties reached a stalemate over the controversial Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) system.

"We made new significant progress, especially on the agriculture issues, but difficulties remain, specifically on the symbolic issue of arbitration, which is politically extremely important," Wallonia president Paul Magnette told the regional parliament. ISDS permits companies to sue governments over perceived loss of profits due to regulations or other laws.

Magnette had told reporters Thursday that the delegation had particular concerns over "matters affecting U.S. companies in Canada which will benefit from the system."

Seems even with a Canadian "trade" deal, the problem the Europeans have is what it allows U.S. companies to do. Still, the obviously pro-corporate Canadian negotiators tried to push it through. And when they failed, they blamed the Europeans for not being "capable" of "having an international treaty."

Friday's talks were held as a last-ditch effort to save the trade deal. After they fell apart, an emotional Freeland told reporters, "I've worked very, very hard, but I think it's impossible," referring to the impasse. "It's become evident for me, for Canada, that the European Union isn't capable now to have an international treaty even with a country that has very European values like Canada."

There's more in the article about the deep and widespread objection across Western Europe to each of these deals. All good news.

Next to Fall: TPP and NAFTA?

Assuming the deals involving the Europeans fail, there's only two more to go — NAFTA and TPP — and both have Withdrawal clauses. Clinton in 2008 promised to renegotiate NAFTA using the threat of withdrawal.

If she was sincere, the same would apply to TPP, which she has recently announced she opposes. I'll be interested to see how all this plays out. At the moment, though, the citizens appear to be winning.

GP
  

U.S. Can Unilaterally Withdraw from TPP and NAFTA Whenever the President Chooses

Senator Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in 2008 promising to use the threat of presidential unilateral withdrawal to force renegotiation of NAFTA

by Gaius Publius

I mentioned something in passing, on the way to make another point in this piece, that deserves to be a point on its own. Neither NAFTA nor TPP are "set in stone." Each so-called "treaty" (in fact, these are executive or congressional-executive agreements) has a Withdrawal clause that allows for any signing nation to unilaterally exit the agreement at any time.

And if I hear Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama correctly in the clip above, the president has that unilateral authority. Neither talks about "going to Congress to get authorization." Clinton would certainly know, as would Al Gore, who was quoted by the moderator, since NAFTA was signed by Bill Clinton with Gore at his side as vice-president.

From the NAFTA text:

Article 2205: Withdrawal
A Party may withdraw from this Agreement six months after it provides written notice of withdrawal to the other Parties. If a Party withdraws, the Agreement shall remain in force for the remaining Parties.

From the TPP text:

Article 30.6: Withdrawal
1. Any Party may withdraw from this Agreement by providing written notice of withdrawal to the Depositary. A withdrawing Party shall simultaneously notify the other Parties of its withdrawal through the overall contact points designated under Article 27.5 (Contact Points).

2. A withdrawal shall take effect six months after a Party provides written notice to the Depositary under paragraph 1, unless the Parties agree on a different period. If a Party withdraws, this Agreement shall remain in force for the remaining Parties.

This means that even if President Obama gets Congress to pass TPP and then signs it, the next president, whoever she or he is, can unilaterally exit each agreement.

Just because these deals are signed, doesn't mean they can't be unsigned at any moment. Something to keep in mind, both during the lame duck session and during the next administration. After all, both major-party candidates now say they oppose TPP.

Put Them on Record About the Withdrawal Clause

The time to put each candidate on the record with respect to the Withdrawal clause is now, since now, before they have your vote, is when they are most inclined to say yes. If you wait until after the election, good luck.

Or, to put it more generally, Gaius' Rule of Acquisition #47 states: The best time to trade with someone is before they have what they want from you, not after. That's also my Theory of Change (number 47).

GP
 

A Clinton Speech to Millennials That Will Work

The cost of college compared to other consumer costs, 1985–2011 (source; click to enlarge)

by Gaius Publius

"I feel like a lot of the stuff Hillary does, you can see when she is trying to, like, earn the youth vote, and it just doesn't work," Nick Chanko, 20, who goes to school in Montreal but votes in New York, told the New York Times. [source]

It's not news that Hillary Clinton is struggling, struggling mightily in fact, to attract millennials in sufficient numbers to put the election out of reach:

The youth vote was one of the pillars of the Obama coalition. But thus far it’s proven perhaps the most difficult one for Clinton to rebuild. Polls show the nominee failing to earn the confidence of young voters—only 33 percent of those between ages 18-29 told Gallup this month that they approved of her—and running far behind where she would hope to be against her Republican opponent. The polls also show Clinton currently winning under half their votes, while Obama got over three-fifths of that demographic in both of his campaigns.

Many people in the Dem establishment are asking the question: How can we get millennials to vote for us?

There are a lot of plans that don't work and won't work, like appearing on an impossibly awkward edition of Between Two Ferns (awkward for both her and the host; Clinton actually had the best ad-lib), or rolling out Bernie Sanders at colleges. Regarding Sanders, Bernie stood for what Bernie stood for, and people, not just millennials, loved him for it. Will they love Clinton if the solution is Bernie Sanders now saying, "Hillary Clinton is a strong progressive too"?

Millennials won't be swayed if Sanders says it, true or not. In this transaction, it has to start with the candidate. Clinton has to make it true. In other words, no matter what changes the DNC makes to, say, its super-delegate rules, or (god forbid they should even consider it) the way they go about raising money, if Hillary Clinton wants to attract Sanders supporters, the move must be hers to make.

The good news is, there is a plan that will work. In this plan, Hillary Clinton gives the following speech about four simple issues. I picked these four. She could have picked others. But either way, if I heard a speech like this, I would find it very convincing.

Do you agree? Read on.

Hillary Clinton's Pitch Speech to Millennials

How would you respond if Hillary Clinton gave the following address?

Good evening.

Tonight I'd like to lay out four proposals that I think are important, both for the nation and for the nation's young people, the next generation for whom we are preparing the world. These are the people who will inherit the world we're building — indeed who are starting to inherit the world even as we speak.

These are the people in our nation's colleges ... the youngest people in the nation's workforce ... the youngest in our country's military. And yes, sadly, these are also the youngest people among the millions suffering from joblessness.

I'm keeping this ... conversation ... to just four issues this evening because I don't want to focus on too many at once. I'll address other critical issues, like climate change and racial justice, in due time. But the ones I will focus on tonight should give everyone watching a very clear idea of where I stand — on jobs, on justice for economic criminals, and on the burden of student debt.

I know these are issues of critical importance to everyone tuning in. Please hear me out.

Issue One — TPP.

Clinton is still speaking:

There is no question that our jobs are going overseas, and no question that unfair trade deals are one of the major causes. I've already said NAFTA didn't work, that it was a disappointment. For the same reason, I've already announced that I oppose TPP as it's currently written, and I said publicly that changes need to be made to it to protect the future of jobs in America.

I still think that. So here's what I will do about TPP as your president:

First, if Congress passes TPP and President Obama signs it, I promise to invoke Article 30.6, called the Withdrawal clause, and immediately withdraw from the TPP.

I will then order that it be renegotiated — under the public eye, in full transparency — so that the higher standards I've already set for this treaty are met.

Next, if Congress does not pass TPP before the election — and I strongly urge them not to — I will start renegotiations as soon as I take office; again, in full view of the public.

Finally, whether I'm the president-elect or not after November 8, I promise to vigorously lobby Congress members not to pass TPP as written if it comes up in the lame duck session.

You can watch me do it.

From the TPP Agreement text:

Article 30.6: Withdrawal

1. Any Party may withdraw from this Agreement by providing written notice of withdrawal to the Depositary. A withdrawing Party shall simultaneously notify the other Parties of its withdrawal through the overall contact points designated under Article 27.5 (Contact Points).

2. A withdrawal shall take effect six months after a Party provides written notice to the Depositary under paragraph 1, unless the Parties agree on a different period. If a Party withdraws, this Agreement shall remain in force for the remaining Parties.

Issue Two — NAFTA.

Clinton is still speaking:

What I said I would do about TPP, I will do about NAFTA as well. We're all disappointed with the result. As your president I will act on that disappointment and force it to be renegotiated, as I promised to do in 2008, by threatening to use Article 2205, the Withdrawal clause, in order to start immediate renegotiations.

I gave my word in 2008. I will keep my word in 2017.

From the NAFTA Agreement text:

Article 2205: Withdrawal

A Party may withdraw from this Agreement six months after it provides written notice of withdrawal to the other Parties. If a Party withdraws, the Agreement shall remain in force for the remaining Parties.

Issue Three — Bankers and Fraud.

Clinton is still speaking:

Next let's look at justice, for now just one aspect — evenhanded criminal justice.

I know that many people are frustrated with what has seemed to them my overly close relationship with Wall Street. I'm here now to prove those people wrong.

I also know that may people think that much of what has been going on in the run-up to the 2008 crash and afterwards is fraudulent, in many cases, fraudulent on its face.

Many Wall Street firms and other major banks have paid heavy fines for their actions — for example, the HSBC money-laundering case in 2012; the Standard Chartered Iran sanctions case, also in 2012; the Barclays case in 2010; and the Credit Suisse case in 2009.

But fines are not enough. If similar actions were performed by the small business women and men of middle America, they'd be facing criminal charges and would be forced to defend their actions in court, as is their right, and would face jail if found guilty.

So I promise to you, the days of Wall Street executives — or indeed, executives of any powerful firm — not having to appear in criminal court for actions that would put any ordinary American citizen in court ... those days are over.

I will start, as soon as I enter the Oval Office, with a criminal investigation of Wells Fargo and its executives conducted by the Department of Justice. Yes, I said criminal investigation.

Issue Four — Student Debt and a Debt Jubilee.

Hillary Clinton is still speaking:

I want to close with this, how I will address the unconscionable magnitude and weight of student debt.

Both Senator Sanders and I agree that the burden of student debt in this country is beyond unbearable. In addition, student loan availability drives the cost of tuition in this country, which has sextupled since the 1980s. Sextupled!

In fact, tuition in the U.S. has risen at almost twice the rate of medical care, more than twice the rate of gasoline, at three times the rate of most consumer goods — all while the incomes of most Americans are essentially flat.

Student debt also drives the rate of despair among our young people, who leave college with what feels like a mortgage, but without the house, and often, without a job in the career they prepared for. And they see no hope in sight, not from their president, nor from their Congress.

This is unacceptable. As president, I will not only address the whole issue of student loans and college tuition — as I said I would do in my platform — but I will do one more thing.

This may not endear me to the bankers some say I'm too close to, but it must to be done. We must free this generation of young people ... and I mean to do it.

To the greatest extent I can, using the power of the executive branch, I will announce and implement a policy of debt forgiveness — a student loan jubilee. And I will challenge every lending institution in this country to follow my example.

This will happen within the first 90 days of my administration. You can watch if you like.

Four simple issues, four of many I could have chosen, all of great importance to prospective millennial voters, especially given their popularity during the Sanders campaign. And note — no hedging, no loopholes, no equivocation. Language like this would be a direct challenge to the voters; they will either believe her or dismiss it completely. Language like this would leave no middle ground.

Don't you think, if millennial voters heard this stark, plain speech, they'd give her candidacy a second chance, their serious consideration? I do.

Donna Brazile and the folks at the DNC, you might give this approach some of your own serious consideration. It's so direct and clear, it's almost guaranteed to work. It's certainly better than what's been going on lately. And no one wants The Donald to win this race.

GP
 

TTIP "Trade" Agreement Talks Indefinitely Suspended

Despite the fervent best wishes of the U.S. corporate class, President Barack Obama, and other aligned politicians, it looks like the people of Europe have killed TTIP. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber; source)

by Gaius Publius

Count this as a victory. It looks like the Atlantic version of TPP, called TTIP, has failed.

Background: The U.S. corporate world has been aching to pass three "trade" mega-deals — TPP, TTIP and TiSA.

• The first, TPP, ropes in nations bordering the Pacific, including the U.S. Canada, Mexico, Peru, Chile and much of Asia (but deliberately not China). 

• The second, TTIP is the same kind of treaty on the Altantic side and includes the U.S., the U.K, and the European Union. 

• TiSA, a more or less global "trade in services" agreement, is the worst of the three and deserves its own, separate treatment. TiSA would radically open local markets to foreign companies that offer "services" — everything from law firms to companies that supply imported contract labor.
  
  (Think about that — companies that supply imported contract labor. Under TiSA, I think unions are instantly dead. You don't have to export jobs to slave labor, very-low-wage, countries if you can import the slave labor here under treaty-mandated expedited visas.)

The citizens of the U.S., both on the left and the right of the political spectrum, have been opposed to these kinds of agreements for years, ever since the devastation caused by Bill Clinton's NAFTA became apparent. Both the Trump campaign and the Sanders campaign were strongly opposed (or in Trump's case, said they were strongly opposed), which accounts for much of their ascendancy.

Opposition to corporate-written "trade" agreements is a huge part of what makes this election a "change election."

A good, brief Wikileaks-produced video explaining these three "trade" mega-deals

Now, thanks mainly to the frustration of the negotiators in Europe — and strong opposition from European citizens — TTIP talks have not just broken down; they've been indefinitely suspended.

This is not complete victory; they could be revived. But momentum has definitely stalled, and this could well be the death knell for this one. Michelle Chen writing at the The Nation:

Another Free-Trade Deal Bites the Dust

Negotiations surrounding the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership have been indefinitely suspended.

What if a trade deal died and nobody noticed? The presidential campaign trail has been awash in angry backlash against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the latest in a slew of controversial free-trade deals that symbolize to American voters the evils of corporate globalization. But another trade deal collapsed silently on the other side of the globe. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) was supposed to be the Atlantic world’s analog to the TPP, but after three years of frustrated negotiations, it was just pronounced dead by key ministers, or at least temporarily moribund, overwhelmed by a phalanx of populist opposition across the continent. How’d that happen?

Chen goes on to explain:

Though smaller in scope than the TPP, TTIP paralleled the Pacific agreement in that it built on trade-agreement proposals that had stalled in previous discussions, ultimately collapsed during the round of World Trade Organization negotiations that began in 2001, and have fizzled out in the years since. EU and US trade ministers had hoped to sell it as a boon to global trade. But an increasingly cynical European public wasn’t buying it, seeing it instead as another pathway to more deregulation and corporate impunity.

Following months of gridlock and protests, and despite a meeting scheduled for next month in New York to continue discussions, negotiations have effectively ground to a halt. (October’s meetings are apparently aimed at redirecting talks toward a smaller-scale, preliminary pact as a substitute to the full TTIP. This is seen as progress, if not outright victory, for campaigns mobilizing against the EU free trade agenda deal by deal.)

It could be that corporate lobbyists and ministers are just hoping for a more opportune political climate, but the demise of this version of TTIP illustrates that, in real-life political terms, trade deals could mostly prove useless at best for trade and devastating at worst for democracy....

"Another pathway to more deregulation and corporate impunity" it certainly is — in fact all of them are that. Makes you wonder why any patriotic soon-to-retire U.S. president would push so hard to pass them. Isn't that person sworn to "protect and defend the Constitution" and not subvert it? But things are what they are, as are the people doing them. Obama has a library to build, and we have a Constitution to protect. We each have our tasks, I guess.

I would call victory on this one and celebrate. The Europeans brought down TTIP. Can we do the same for TPP? One down and two to go. Onward.

GP