If you include aid bill for workers who lose jobs to overseas...that means you expect it to happen

[madfloridian]

And it is ludicrous to deny that job loss will be one of the consequences of the trade bill that is more than a trade bill.

On the other side of the argument is the trade pact's potential to foster economic growth and job creation — "650,000 jobs in the U.S. alone," as Secretary of State John F. Kerry asserted last month. But that widely challenged figure is extrapolated from a 2012 report by the Peterson Institute of International Economics, which didn't offer a jobs estimate. In fact, the report said the TPP might dislocate workers and drive older people out of the workforce — and that any benefits might be canceled out by the resulting costs to workers and society. Evidence from earlier trade pacts, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, suggests that the benefits for developing countries among the treaty signatories are similarly oversold.

Back to today:

From Slate:

It Turns Out That Obama Won the Free-Trade Fight in Congress After All


Barack Obama with his best friends John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. Larry Downing/Reuters

Here's the long and short of what happened:

The majority-Republican Senate had passed a bill giving the president fast-track authority and providing aid to workers who might lose their jobs because of TPP.

The majority-Republican House split that bill into two. They passed the fast-track part—with mostly Republican votes—but rejected the aid part. Many Republicans simply didn't support the aid bill at all, and while many Democrats do want to give aid to workers, they decided not to vote for the bill because they didn't ultimately trust the president to negotiate a good enough overall trade deal.

It seemed like this had killed both the fast-track and the aid elements because the Senate's version had passed both of them together.

But then, Tuesday, Democratic senators were persuaded to peel the fast-track part off from the aid part and approve the fast-track separately.

Of course, the process still isn't over: Democratic senators only agreed to approve fast-track on its own because they were promised that a compromise on aid could ultimately be reached and a separate aid bill passed

Since Fast Track passed, let's hope the Democrats who voted yes did not trust in vain.

They already know it will affect workers here.

[geek tragedy]

1. Even the pro-free traders acknowledge that there will be "winners and losers" as

they like to put it.

Amazingly, lobbyists, politicians, and bankers are never amongst the "losers"

[madfloridian]

3. Remember when Obama spoke of the "losers" and what to do about them? Video

Barack Obama's 2006 speech at launch of Brookings Hamilton Project.

I think that if you polled manyof the people in this room, most of us are strong free traders and most of us believe in markets. Bob and I have had a running debate now for about a year about how do we, in fact, deal with the losers in a globalized economy. There has been a tendency in the past for us to say, well, look, we have got to grow the pie, and we will retrain those who need retraining. But in fact we have never taken that side of the equation as seriously as we need to take it. So hopefully, this is not just going to be a lot of preaching to the choir. Hopefully, part of what we are going to be doing is challenging our own conventional wisdom and pushing boundaries and testing these ideas in a vigorous and aggressive way.

....Just remember, as we move forward, that there are real consequences to the work that is being done here. There are people in places like Decatur, Illinois, or Galesburg,Illinois, who have seen their jobs eliminated. They have lost their health care. They have lost their retirement security. They don't have a clear sense of how their children will succeed in the same way that they succeeded. They believe that this may be the first generation in which their children do worse than they do. Some of that, then, will end up manifesting itself in the sort of nativist sentiment, protectionism, and anti-immigration sentiment that we are debating here in Washington. So there are real consequences to the work that is being done here. This is not a bloodless process.

Not a bloodless process at all.

[geek tragedy]

4. This is kind of like the genie who grants three wishes:

"I wish for Obama to fulfill his promise to renegotiate NAFTA."

Never assume things can't get worse, I guess.

[djean111]

2. And that job loss is only one bad thing in a heap of corporate gifts.

I think the job loss bill was purely political ass-covering. My prediction (and I hope I am wrong) - the money will be siphoned out of Medicare, and only $49 will be used to actually help workers. And passing anything that makes taking money out of Medicare is a very bad precedent.

[madfloridian]

14. That's worrying me about the Medicare part.

I think that might happen.

[pampango]

5. Any trade policy has winners and losers. We could bring back high tariffs of the pre-FDR 1920's and

there would be winners and losers - and the need for TAA.

[madfloridian]

6. Well...

Call me overly suspicious..but when a president of one party depends on the congressional members of the other party while lecturing and pressuring his own party members...something is wrong.

[pampango]

8. Fair enough. But that is a different argument than saying there exists a trade policy that

does not have winners and losers. There should be an effective TAA no matter what trade policy we adopt.

[FreakinDJ]

10. To suggest TPP is a good thing - Is to have your head in the sand SOoooo Far ...

you can see China

America doesn't negotiate America's own Trade Agreements - Foreign Owner Corporations do

[pampango]

12. I "suggested" that there is no trade policy that does not have winners and losers.

If you believe there is a golden trade policy that has only winners, you are entitled to your opinion. And I won't suggest anything concerning the location of your head.

[madfloridian]

13. If it were a trade deal good for this country, it should not need the TAA.

[mythology]

9. Quit being logical

Doom and gloom is the only answer.

Change always causes some people in the short term to win or lose. Whether that was the improvements in agriculture that allowed fewer people to be required to feed more people that spawned the growth of culture, or the advent of mass scale textiles which hurt cobblers and seamstresses.

[Rilgin]

11. The problem is that the assistance fights what is happening and is a fraud

The labor problem in the world has many aspects but one of the most important is that automation and productivity gains have reduced the need for human labor. What significant human labor remains is smaller or in the those huge third world factories using human labor and outcompeting the machines by low pay and horrible working conditions.

The winners in this world is the owning class ... owners of resource... owners of production ... and owners of intellectual property. Trade agreements do nothing to change this equation except around the edges. Some industries might utilize some more labor. However, the real trends of the past thirty years has been moving labor to service economy jobs which pay less and have no real futures.

TAA is based on tired concepts. When actually pressed on what it means, it means retraining. When asked the obvious question for what jobs, you will hear crickets or meaningless further statements like the jobs of the 21st century or "good paying" jobs. Or as the president recently said, we will train our workers to outcompete everyone else for those good paying jobs because thats what America is about (paraphrased but pretty close). This statement made me sick and is totally meaningless. There is nothing on the horizon that will create more good paying jobs in the world since the trends are to reduce those good paying jobs leaving only service jobs and local jobs. Competing with the world seems appropriate for a coach but is also meaningless. Very few teams win and there is no way we can outcompete everyone. So ultimately as a substitute for radical change, TAA may help a very few who are winners and can outcompete everyone else and will do nothing else.

And once again, we have no one really talking truth and identifying the real issue. How do we create a better and fair world with a reduced world wide need for jobs. Retraining programs that occupy people for a few years training for jobs that do not and never will exist is just a fraud.

[KG]

7. the TPP pimps are mighty fucking glib about others losing their jobs.

[madfloridian]

15. Doesn't affect them, so they just brush it off.

They knew back for years who the "losers" would be. Us.