Good to see Elizabeth Warren taking on the Trans Pacific Partnership. Aside from her terrific leadership opposing Wall Street, her views on some other important issues (for example, her fairly mainstream blindly pro-Israel views) have been less clearly progressive. But kudos on this.
Speaking out:
The Massachusetts senator is stepping up her criticism of the administration’s proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, a centerpiece of the president’s second-term agenda, saying it could allow multinational corporations to gut U.S. regulations and win big settlements funded by U.S. taxpayers but decided by an international tribunal.
“This deal would give protections to international corporations that are not available to United States environmental and labor groups,” Warren said in an interview with POLITICO. “Multinational corporations are increasingly realizing this is an opportunity to gut U.S. regulations they don’t like.”
And:
Opponents of Obama’s trade agenda seized on Warren’s new comments and said they raised the profile of the opposition and made defeating the deals more likely. The administration is asking Congress for “fast-track” status for the TPP, meaning that lawmakers wouldn’t be able to amend the deal, only vote up or down on what the administration negotiates.
“Having a champion for working families and the environment speaking up like this against parts of TPP sends a real signal to the rest of Congress,” said Ilana Solomon, director for The Sierra Club’s “Responsible Trade” program. “If you are on the side of helping the environment and working families and taking a stand against corporate power, you have to be against fast-track and TPP as well.” Solomon added that Warren was moving strategically to “elevate these issues at a critical moment when fast track and other trade agreements are coming to a head in Congress.”
Her opposition focuses primarily on the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions, which I wrote about
here.
Truthfully, I don't believe that this will have much effect in blocking "fast track" or TPP in the Senate, which has been, on the whole, much more friendly in a bi-partisan way to NAFTA-style so-called "free trade" and "fast track" (which allows a trade deal to be presented to Congress for an up-or-down vote, blocking any ability to offer amendments). But, obviously, her voice carries weight with the larger progressive message and could influence votes in the House where, in my opinion, there is a stronger chance TPP can be blocked because of the opposition of a majority of Democrats and a number of Republicans.