After Getting Called Out, Elizabeth Warren Accuses Obama Of Deliberately Hiding Trade Details

 

The Obama administration has briefed members of Congress on the deal, called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but has blocked members from publicly discussing specifics. Last month, an Obama administration official told The Huffington Post that the briefings on the deal were classified because they were sensitive and ongoing.

 

Warren -

 

"We can’t make this deal public because if the American people saw what was in it, they would be opposed to it.'"

 

Anyone know this trade deal was in progress?

I heard of it a few days ago and really did not hear of any details. Just assumed it would be similar to NAFTA.

Hide something, surely not. His Adm is as transparent as it gets. Plus he said it was for the middle class.

Some more on this.

 

Opinion in NYT:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/22/opinion/obama-and-republicans-agree-on-the-trans-pacific-partnership-unfortunately.html

 

There’s an important issue out there you may never have heard of, which is just what its proponents would like. That’s the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), currently being pushed by the Obama administration and its corporate (and mostly Republican!) allies. It’s a blatant attack on labor, farmers, food safety, public health and even national sovereignty.

 

The agreement would even allow countries to challenge one another’s laws, so that “equivalency” may simply mean that the least powerful regulations become the norm. The United States would have no special standing: If our laws are seen as restraining trade or limiting profits, they could be challenged in special courts, per the TPP’s “investor state” clause.

 

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich called the TPP “Nafta on steroids” (“corporate coup d’état” is also good). As the economist Dean Baker said to Bill Moyers, “This really is a deal that’s being negotiated by corporations for corporations, and any benefit it provides to the bulk of the population of this country will be purely incidental.”

 

More from NYT:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/17/business/obama-trade-legislation-fast-track-authority-trans-pacific-partnership.html?_r=0

 

It would give Congress the power to vote on the more encompassing 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership once it is completed, but would deny lawmakers the chance to amend what would be the largest trade deal since the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994, which President Bill Clinton pushed through Congress despite opposition from labor and other Democratic constituencies.