By a 5 to 1 majority, the city council of Northampton, Massachusetts, my home city, approved a resolution sponsored by Council President Bill Dwight, Ward 1 Councilor Maureen Carney, and Ward 7 Councilor Alisa Klein denouncing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). This trade agreement, concluded between the U.S. and eleven other trading partners on the Pacific rim in October of 2015, eliminates a wide range of multilateral trade restrictions for the signatories while seeking to enforce International Labor Organization (ILO) standards on the organizational rights of workers and on prohibitions trade of commodities produced by child labor and forced labor and to enforce a range of provisions on preservation of endangered species and comprehensive management of fisheries as conditions for full enforcement of trade liberalization provisions (see Office of the United States Trade Representative, "The Trans-Pacific Partnership," at: https://ustr.gov/tpp/). In these regards, if the trade agreement fulfills the promises conveyed by the Obama administration and its trade representatives in its negotiation, then it should broadly benefit a range of industries in the U.S., most notably agricultural and extractive sectors, while simultaneously benefiting workers in countries like Vietnam and Malaysia with poor records of enforcement in the protection of independent organizational rights and credible institutions of collective bargaining. Assuming this is the case, and especially to the extent that the Obama administration has gone out of its way to tout American benefits from such an agreement, it is worth considering why both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, as Democratic Party Presidential candidates, and numerous Congressional Democrats including Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congressman Jim McGovern of the Second Congressional district of Massachusetts, my congressman, have opposed the agreement. Likewise, one of the statutory cleared advisers to the trade delegation negotiating the TPP has argued that the secrecy with which U.S. negotiators operated made it impossible for a thorough evaluation of trade provisions, including important topics like country of origin provisions governing the extent to which products, manufactured with materials originated from countries outside the TPP zone, will be conferred duty-free status (see Michael Wessel, "I've read Obama's trade deal. Elizabeth Warren is right to be concerned," on Politico, Primary Source, at: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/05/tpp-elizabeth-warren-labor-118068). Acknowledging the necessity to maintain the secrecy of certain provisions in order to avoid misrepresentation of particular details by the media in ways that might derail the broader negotiations process, if the administration cannot share its bargaining positions and counter-proposals by negotiating partners openly with personnel tasked and cleared to view confidential materials by legislative statute to perform an advisory role, then how can advisers be expected to do the job Congress has tasked them to do in guarding the interests of various segments of the American public and the American business community.
In these respects, I think I can offer a few observations regarding both the TPP and Democratic opposition to the agreement, inclusive of Northampton's city council resolution. First, in line with Michael Wessel's arguments concerning the negotiations process, it is unclear whether the Obama administration as a whole and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in particular are being disingenuous about the benefits and latent costs of the TPP. In general, as someone who has spent classroom time explaining the Ricardian theory of comparative advantage to undergraduate economics students and, notwithstanding possible dynamic criticisms, largely accepts its logic, I think the U.S. federal government should play an active role in shaping the transition of the U.S. economy in order to achieve a broader conformity with patterns of comparative advantage internationally, if only for the potential benefit that such a realignment might have for American consumers. In the long run, this certainly means a declining share of manufacturing employment in the U.S., a pattern that has been evident for several decades. On the other hand, to the extent that we may be moving in a direction detrimental to a range of manufacturing industries, including, especially, automobile manufacturing, we need to be able to openly debate long term changes to the composition of aggregate American employment and supporters of increased trade liberalization in manufactured goods should have to expressly articulate the expected gains and losses from trade to enable Congress and, by virtue of the broader democratic process and pressure from constituents, the larger electorate to evaluate the impact of a trade deal like TPP. For this process to occur with this level of secrecy amounts to a perversion of the democratic process to serve interests undisclosed to the American public.
Moreover, if the claims of the Obama administration and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative can be taken at face value, then we can assume that workers in places like Vietnam, and, for that matter, Mexico will be guaranteed legitimate rights to organize and collectively bargain for better wages and working conditions, under threat of trade sanctions/initiation of bilateral trade restrictions and punitive tariffs relative to trade with the U.S. The same apparently can be said with respect to enforcement of agreements on trade in endangered species and regulation of maritime commerce to reduce over fishing. On the other hand, the thresholds for enforcement of punitive sanctions for breach of labor standards and environmental rules are unclear in the administration's documentation on TPP. If we do not know the conditions under which trade partners will be held to account on important matters of economic and environmental policy, then how can we be sure that the trade agreement will meet broader policy goals with regard to these countries? Specifically, with regard to our TPP partners in Southeast Asia, the enforcement of collective bargaining rights for workers to a degree consistent with ILO standards would be apt to raise manufacturing costs, hampering capital investment in manufacturing at privileged export processing zones. How can we be sure that governments in this region will faithfully allow a larger share of gains from trade to be enjoyed by labor, thus, enabling a balanced increase in living standards rather than unmitigated financial bonanza for owners and financiers of sweatshops?
In regard to Northampton's resolution, I am doubtful that the city council's actions will have much effect on Congress' eventual evaluation of TPP. Our congressman already agrees that TPP is a bad idea. For my part, I'm with At-large Councilman Jesse Adams, the lone "no" vote on the council. Being at least somewhat predisposed toward the potential benefits from trade liberalization, I just do not have enough information to say, one way or another, whether TPP is, in fact, a bad deal, and the information supplied to the American electorate, to Congress, and even to privileged, cleared advisory staff by the administration appears inadequate to make any informed decision. In this sense, I think it is fair to say that I simply have no idea what to think about TPP, and I hope that Congress will demand a more thorough examination of its provisions before any decision is made on the agreement.
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