2016 Postmortem

And sometimes I suspect they pretend not to know because of their political objections.

A representative can't claim not to know when there were 1,700 congressional briefings as the fact sheet I shared shows. The process has not changed, since NAFTA. And there were similar "Secrecy" claims then too which were unfounded.

We have benefited from Trade. We didn't mitigate the harmful effects of globalization ( partly due to our greedy management culture) but any negative broad brush of our trade agreements is disingenuous.

Fast Track was useful for a very important reason: it was a way for our trade partners to have faith that whatever was agreed on won't be hit by amendments which would vastly alter provisions. This doesn't mean that Congress is toothless- in exchange for an agreement being fast tracked, Congress sets its own terms for expediting the bills - which involves our representatives.

And the reason I give Obama space on this is because the alternative claims defy belief and I've read and heard them all: Obama was threatened to support the TPP, OBama was bribed, Obama doesn't care, Obama is a corporatist shill etc etc etc.