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Obama’s Trade Chief, Undaunted by Odds, Pushes for Trans-Pacific Partnership
Obama’s Trade Chief, Undaunted by Odds, Pushes for Trans-Pacific Partnership
12/30/14
Michael B. Froman, the United States trade representative.
WASHINGTON — For Michael B. Froman, President Obama’s chief evangelist for expanding global trade, skepticism comes with the territory.
He and his colleagues have clocked more than 1,500 meetings on Capitol Hill to promote the president’s big potential trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership — and still its prospects for passage look as problematic as ever.
Even before Mr. Froman began facing a leery Congress, he had to persuade wary colleagues at the White House that it was worth pursuing. They scoffed that the original T.P.P. concept, conceived during the administration of George W. Bush, was too small, with only four Asian countries as members. And in the chaotic days of 2009, when Mr. Froman was deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, embarking on a campaign to advance a new trade agenda seemed less important than averting a global financial collapse.
...Still, to members of Congress, both for and against expanded trade agreements, Mr. Obama’s trade agenda has been waiting in the wings for so long that the promises of action are beginning to ring hollow. Efforts in the House and Senate to grant Mr. Obama trade promotion authority — once known as fast-track authority, and viewed as critical to passing major trade deals — have gone nowhere.
Mr. Froman insists the political stars have aligned. Republican control of the Senate has elevated pro-trade lawmakers to key positions in leadership and committee control, and the international negotiations themselves have progressed.
But the deal’s completion is certainly not guaranteed. Republicans inclined to give the president trade-negotiating authority are still seething at his executive action deferring deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants. Many conservatives are in no mood to give Mr. Obama anything, said Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, and a former United States trade representative in the George W. Bush administration.
...Democrats may be the bigger problem. Mr. Froman has met dozens of times with Representative Sander M. Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction on trade. And Mr. Levin said he wants to work with the administration on the T.P.P., down to the finest details.
But he said he was not about to allow Mr. Obama to negotiate the partnership on his own, then present it to Congress for an up-or-down vote with no opportunity to change it. And Mr. Levin’s stature and seniority command respect in the House Democratic Caucus.
...Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee in the coming Congress, is one of the strongest trade advocates in Washington; he said virtually no Democrat who had supported trade promotion authority in the past would be left in the Senate next year....
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/31/business/obamas-trade-chief-undaunted-by-odds-pushes-for-trans-pacific-partnership.html?_r=0
12/30/14
Michael B. Froman, the United States trade representative.
WASHINGTON — For Michael B. Froman, President Obama’s chief evangelist for expanding global trade, skepticism comes with the territory.
He and his colleagues have clocked more than 1,500 meetings on Capitol Hill to promote the president’s big potential trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership — and still its prospects for passage look as problematic as ever.
Even before Mr. Froman began facing a leery Congress, he had to persuade wary colleagues at the White House that it was worth pursuing. They scoffed that the original T.P.P. concept, conceived during the administration of George W. Bush, was too small, with only four Asian countries as members. And in the chaotic days of 2009, when Mr. Froman was deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, embarking on a campaign to advance a new trade agenda seemed less important than averting a global financial collapse.
...Still, to members of Congress, both for and against expanded trade agreements, Mr. Obama’s trade agenda has been waiting in the wings for so long that the promises of action are beginning to ring hollow. Efforts in the House and Senate to grant Mr. Obama trade promotion authority — once known as fast-track authority, and viewed as critical to passing major trade deals — have gone nowhere.
Mr. Froman insists the political stars have aligned. Republican control of the Senate has elevated pro-trade lawmakers to key positions in leadership and committee control, and the international negotiations themselves have progressed.
But the deal’s completion is certainly not guaranteed. Republicans inclined to give the president trade-negotiating authority are still seething at his executive action deferring deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants. Many conservatives are in no mood to give Mr. Obama anything, said Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, and a former United States trade representative in the George W. Bush administration.
...Democrats may be the bigger problem. Mr. Froman has met dozens of times with Representative Sander M. Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction on trade. And Mr. Levin said he wants to work with the administration on the T.P.P., down to the finest details.
But he said he was not about to allow Mr. Obama to negotiate the partnership on his own, then present it to Congress for an up-or-down vote with no opportunity to change it. And Mr. Levin’s stature and seniority command respect in the House Democratic Caucus.
...Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee in the coming Congress, is one of the strongest trade advocates in Washington; he said virtually no Democrat who had supported trade promotion authority in the past would be left in the Senate next year....
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/31/business/obamas-trade-chief-undaunted-by-odds-pushes-for-trans-pacific-partnership.html?_r=0
17 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Instead, it's been worked on by the rich and their corporate stooges.
William K. Black is a well-respected expert on white collar crime. As a forensic economist in the employ of the federal government, he helped jail hundreds of S&L crooks in the 1990s.
Obama’s Latest Betrayal of America and Americans in Favor of the Big Banks: TISA
By William K. Black
New Economic Perspectives, June 24, 2014
Introduction
EXCERPT...
“Transparency” for Bankers: Maximum Opaqueness for the Public and Congress
The TISA draft (Article X.16) is very clear about the second great paradox: bankers must be told everything that regulators are thinking about adopting and have ample opportunity to influence the regulators’ drafting of the rule. But TISA is an international secret that will remain an international secret for five years after it is adopted. Like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the drafts are kept secret even from Congress. Indeed, TISA is “classified” so that those who might blow the whistle on the travesty may be prosecuted. The draft’s initial information contains this language:
“Declassify on: Five years from entry into force of the TISA agreement….
It must be stored in a locked or secured building, room, or container.”
I note this obvious, indefensible hypocrisy because it is illustrative of the entire draft. When the indefensible appears in a document like this it is because the drafters know that there is no one representing the other side and they can afford to be outrageously one-sided. It was clearly drafted by and for lobbyists for the SDIs. Any government officials involved in the drafting are simply scribes who will be rewarded on the other side of the revolving door. There is no pretense that the draft is a reasoned response to differing views. Only one set of views – literally the wish list of the largest, most criminal banks – is presented and it is presented in exceptionally extreme language. There is literally nothing in the draft designed to increase the regulatory protections afforded the public from private banks. There is literally nothing in the draft that increases restrictions on private banks.
As a lawyer I recognize exactly what happened because the draft reads exactly like how we draft a wish list. Obama is a lawyer. Mr. President, read the draft and it will be obvious to you that no one is representing the public. The President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa (an economist), was outraged when he learned of what the bankers were trying to achieve through TISA. Sadly, the U.S. played a disgraceful role in pushing TISA forward over Ecuador’s objections. If Obama were to admit that Ecuador was right, bring the U.S. back to representing the public rather than the looters, and make public the entire disgraceful draft TISA would collapse.
TISA’s drafting consists of a meeting of banking thieves who are successfully demanding a return to what Gramlich correctly described as “no cops on the beat.” If the street robbers of the world demanded that we remove the cops on the beat we would be enraged. Bankers and their neoclassical economist allies, however, regularly lobby for just such a boon to elite white-collar criminals. We have millennia of experience with what happens when we give the elites the power to loot with impunity.
CONTINUED w/links...
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/06/obamas-latest-betrayal-america-americans-favor-big-banks-tisa.html
The three “de’s” – deregulation, desupervision, and de facto decriminalization – first looted America's S&Ls and then America's banks. Now, TiSA wants to deregulate the world's banks. Anyone think the money will go to a good cause?
