I guess it's a no-brainer to point out that The New York Times is basically in the tank for so-called "free trade" (I need to underscore I've always written "so-called" going back to NAFTA because these deals have nothing to with "free trade" theory, at least if you bother to read David Ricardo). The paper has loved so-called "free trade" for a very long time (in fairness I have a bias against those cretins since they attacked by little ole blog a decade ago for calling for primaries against the CAFTA 15). But, it's one thing to be ideologically in favor. It's another thing to be dumb.
The recent idiocy comes from Jonathan Weisman's piece on the website called "Obama’s Push for Trade Deal Faces Bipartisan Peril in House". At first, reading along, I thought, OK, the beginning is in sync with what I've heard for a long time: fast track is in trouble in the House.
Then, as if to help POTUS, who has united the party behind him--the Republican Party--but can't do the same in his own party, we get this stupidity:
The president needs the authority to finish up the Pacific accord, the largest trade deal in a generation, linking 12 nations — including Canada and Chile in the Americas, and Japan and Australia across the Pacific — in a pact that would not just further cut generally low tariffs on goods but also put in place investment rules for roughly 40 percent of the global economy. The White House says, moreover, that the deal is an essential element in America’s strategic posture in Asia vis-à-vis the rising power of China.[emphasis added]
Putting aside the White House/Pentagon China-fear mongering talking points trying to make TPP about China, this is just pure nonsense. As I've written repeatedly (including
here), there is absolutely no need for fast track to exist to pass these stupid ass so-called "Free trade" deals.
My friends at Global Trade Watch have correctly pointed out:
· Fast Track has been in effect for only five years (2002-2007) of the 21 years since passage of NAFTA and the agreement that created the WTO.
· A two-year effort by President Bill Clinton to obtain Fast Track trade authority during his second term in office was voted down on the House floor in 1998 when 171 Democrats were joined by 71 GOP members who bucked then-Speaker Newt Gingrich. Clinton did not have Fast Track for six of his eight years in office, but still implemented more than a hundred trade agreements.
You no more need fast track to pass these deals than...say, a Chipotle-eating, van-driving presidential candidate needs a moral compass to run for the White House. One can be done without the other.