Tuesday 19 May 2015

Trade and Trust - NYTimes.com

I'm getting increasingly unhappy with the way the Obama administration is handling the dispute over TPP. I understand the case for the deal, and while I still lean negative I'm not one of those who believes that it would be an utter disaster.

But the administration — and the president himself — don't help their position by being dismissive of the complaints and lecturing the critics (Elizabeth Warren in particular) about how they just have no idea what they're talking about. That would not be a smart strategy even if the administration had its facts completely straight — and it doesn't. Instead, assurances about what is and isn't in the deal keep turning out to be untrue. We were assured that the dispute settlement procedure couldn't be used to force changes in domestic laws; actually, it apparently could. We were told that TPP couldn't be used to undermine financial reform; again, it appears that it could.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/trade-and-trust/




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