Less than a week after formally launching her presidential campaign, former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton is already being tested on a thorny issue for Democrats: free-trade deals and their impact on workers.
The issue is a backdrop for almost any global economic affairs debate in Washington, with many Democrats and their backers arguing that free-trade deals help big corporations, but drive US jobs abroad to cheaper labor markets.
On Thursday, the debate rose to a full boil when members of the US Congress from both parties announced legislation that would give US President Barack Obama the “fast-track” trade negotiating authority to complete a massive Asia-Pacific free-trade deal.
Over two days of campaigning in Iowa this week, where she discussed economics, Clinton, who is the commanding front-runner to be the Democratic nominee for next year’s presidential election, uttered not a word about the potential Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) between the US and 11 other Pacific Rim nations.
If Obama does not get fast-track “trade promotion authority” (TPA) from Congress setting rules for debating TPP, it will be nearly impossible to complete the sprawling pact that aims to lower trade barriers and further stimulate trade with nations ranging from Australia, Japan and Chile to Singapore and Vietnam.
The TPA fight in Congress could be over this year, long before the election campaigns really heat up. However, if Congress approves fast-track, the second chapter — an up-or-down vote by Congress on whatever TPP deal Obama agrees to — could be raging in November next year as the election nears.
“She puts herself in a very difficult position no matter what she says [about trade],” said Paul Sracic, who heads Youngstown State University’s Politics and International Relations Department in Ohio and focuses on global trade.
That is because Clinton, who has spent decades in the national limelight, including as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, could face attacks from many angles, especially in swing states like Ohio that could decide who wins the White House.
If Clinton were to align herself with the labor unions — a position that would put her in the same camp as conservative Tea Party Republicans — that are already trying to defeat TPA and TPP, she could win points in Ohio, Nevada and other states rich in organized labor votes.
However, at the same time, she would be distancing herself from some of the work she did when she was a top official in the Obama administration at the exact time Obama, her ex-boss, is traveling the nation selling the free-trade deal.
“One of her primary accomplishments as secretary of state was the so-called Asia pivot” that refocused US diplomacy away from the Middle East and toward the Asian nations that are central to the TPP, Sracic said.
Conversely, if Clinton were to embrace the pact and campaign on it, she would put herself at odds with Democratic stalwarts, such as former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, who is running for a US Senate seat and US Senator Sherrod Brown, also from Ohio, who opposes the fast-track legislation as drafted and is prodding Clinton to make her views known.
For the moment, Clinton’s response was noncommittal.
In a statement on Friday, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said Clinton believes the US “should be willing to walk away” from any trade measure that does not “protect American workers and create more good jobs at home,” while also strengthening national security.
Clinton, “will be watching closely” to see how the final deal tackles currency manipulation, labor rights and other contentious issues, he said.
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