Hillary breaks from Obama, opposes trade pact
Hillary Clinton said Wednesday she now opposes the proposed Pacific Rim trade deal in her biggest break yet from President Obama, a move her critics called another policy shift aimed at winning over liberal Democrats.
“I am not in favor of what I have learned about it,” Clinton said in an interview on PBS’ News Hour.
“I have said from the very beginning that we have to have a trade agreement that would create good American jobs, raise wages and advance our national security,” she said, and she doesn’t believe the agreement “is going to meet the high bar I have set.”
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is opposed by labor unions.
Clinton’s move is a reversal from her support for the deal as Obama’s first secretary of State and is the latest step she has taken toward the more liberal wing of her party before the first Democratic debate Oct. 13 in Las Vegas.
Her remarks come as Vice President Biden weighs entering the contest. Biden’s office issued a one-sentence statement: “The vice president supports the TPP agreement and will help pass it on the Hill.” Obama said the agreement will eliminate or reduce foreign tariffs on each nation’s products, easing trade in a zone that stretches from Canada to Chile to Australia and Japan. For the United States, it means the elimination of what amounts to foreign taxes on about 18,000 U.S. products.
“This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements,” Clinton said during a visit to Australia in 2012.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement, “Clinton’s painful waffling on TPP has been a case study in political expediency and is precisely why an overwhelming majority of Americans don’t trust her.”