Saturday, December 26, 2015

Lee Fang. O’Malley’s Populist Critique of Trade Pact Unsupported by Prior Comments. The Intercept. 03 Apr 2015.



Former Gov. Martin O’Malley, D-Md., now positioning himself as a progressive populist among potential 2016 presidential candidates, told USA Today that he differs from Hillary Clinton because he opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement he said will “hollow out our middle class and middle class wages.”
The Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, is a proposed free trade accord between the U.S. and 11 Pacific Rim countries. Critics say the deal will provide corporate interests with sweeping powers to challenge banking and environmental regulations and other rules in special courts set up under the World Bank, and they argue the TPP will hurt American jobs by extending the ability of businesses to relocate facilities to countries involved in the agreement.
But just two years ago, there was no criticism to be heard when O’Malley discussed the TPP.
On May 8, 2013, O’Malley spoke before a trade conference hosted by the Council of Americas in Washington, D.C., where he was asked on camera about his perspective as a governor on the TPP and other trade deals pursued by the Obama administration. “I would hazard to guess that a majority of us [governors] believe that free trade, provided it’s fair — and that’s always the rub — is a net benefit for us. I believe that, at the risk of stating the painfully obvious, we’re all part of a global economy,” O’Malley said. “So it would seem to me, that to the extent that we can be proactive in concluding agreements with strategic partners, geographically, philosophically, then that is a benefit to us.”
Watch O’Malley’s comments below:

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