Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, greeted President Obama in May. Vietnam is among 12 nations to sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership.Doug Mills/The New York TimesWASHINGTON — President Obama, reaching Asia on Friday, will reassure allies of his determination to win congressional approval of the far-reaching Trans-Pacific Partnership trade accord, but back home in congressional races, his party is on the air and online slamming it as a bad deal — and hitting Republicans for supporting it.
The friendly fire from Democratic candidates and committees speaks to the formidable challenge that Mr. Obama now faces in getting Congress to endorse the 12-nation agreement that was the signature economic goal of his second term.
So dicey are the politics that Republican congressional leaders have been unwilling to commit to a vote even in the postelection lame duck Congress. Without approval by the United States, the accord liberalizing trade among Pacific Rim countries representing 40 percent of the global economy cannot take effect. Both major-party candidates to succeed Mr. Obama oppose it. On Thursday, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. circulated on social media the words of its president, Richard Trumka, about the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, at a news event hosted by the Christian Science Monitor: “I’ve looked her squarely in the eye and we’ve talked about T.P.P. I’ve known her for 30 years, and there’s never been one time when Hillary Clinton gave me her word that she didn’t follow through on.”
White House officials insist that Democratic efforts against the trade pact are misguided. “It’s apparent that some members of Congress might be a little behind the curve when it comes to the politics of the president’s strategy around trade policy,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said on Wednesday.
Continue reading the main story
Typically, most Democrats, pressed by organized labor, reject trade agreements as threatening, especially to manufacturing jobs; presidents of both parties have relied on Republican votes for trade pacts. But more Republicans have become skeptics over time, a trend intensified lately by theirprotectionist nominee, Donald J. Trump, who has called the T.P.P. “a rape of our country.”
Especially in several manufacturing states that are crucial to the Democrats’ quest to recapture the Senate, Republicans are caught in a vise between Democrats’ attacks and fear of alienating Mr. Trump’s antitrade, working-class voters — damned if they endorse the T.P.P. and damned as flip-floppers if they oppose it.
No hay comentarios.:
Publicar un comentario