As Congress prepares to give President Barack Obama expedited powers to “fast-track” trade deals through Congress, many U.S. steel mills and skeptics of Obama’s trade agenda are worried about steel dumping, the term commonly used to describe countries selling steel below market price. In an interview with The Huffington Post on Tuesday, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), one of the many …
If Trade Is War, It’s Time We Fought Back – Sonali Kolhatkar
It is not often that members of Congress get the opportunity to weigh in on international trade. But negotiations over fast-track authorityfor the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)in recent months have given elected representatives the chance to voice their opinions on how the government should engage with other countries financially. For example, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., released a reportthis week highlighting various promises that presidents …
The Trans-Pacific Partnership: A Deeply Flawed Partnership – Mel Gurtov
The American people have become used to government trickery in foreign affairs—wars and interventions based on lies and falsified evidence, “national security” used to justify the whittling away of privacy, classification of documents to hide embarrassing disclosures, massaging of budget figures to mask outrageous spending on arms, and demands for new weapons when already in possession of an unmatched conventional …
Obama’s Ugly Show of Presidential Petulance – Jim Hightower
When the going got tough, Barack got in a huff, and then he got gruff. President Obama has worked himself into such a tizzy over the TPP that he’s lashing out at his progressive friends in Congress. He’s mad because they refuse to be stereotypical lemmings, following him over this political cliff called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It masquerades as a …
Trans-Pacific Partnership-Related Bill Contains A Medicare Poison Pill – Diane Archer
New disturbing information has surfaced that the House Republicans’ trade adjustment assistance bill, which supports the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, contains a Medicare poison pill. The bill includes $700 million in Medicare cuts at the end of a 10-year budget period to cover the cost of trade adjustment assistance for displaced workers, Americans who will lose their jobs because …
Trans-Pacific Trade Deal Is Latest Threat to Our Democracy – John Buell
‘Neoliberal capitalism is already global,’ writes Buell. ‘Resistance to it must itself be global and democratic.’ Conservatives warn us that deficit spending will turn the U.S. into a fiscal basket case, like Greece. No longer truly independent, Greece is ruled by the IMF, the ECB, and the European Commission. What conservatives seldom point out is that membership in the Eurozone …
The Democratic Party Would Triangulate Its Own Mother – Matt Taibbi
Barack Obama made headlines this week by taking on Sen. Elizabeth Warren in a dispute over our latest labor-crushing free trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The president’s anger over Warren’s decision to lead the Senate in blocking his authority to fast-track the TPP was heavily covered by the Beltway media, which loves a good intramural food fight. It was quite …
The Average Age Of A Minimum Wage Worker In America Is 36 – Michael Snyder
Did you know that 89 percent of all minimum wage workers in the United States are not teens? At this point, the average age of a minimum wage worker in this country is 36, and 56 percent of them are women. Millions upon millions of Americans are working as hard as they can (often that means two or three jobs), …
The Liberal Apologies for Obama’s Ugly Reign – PAUL STREET
“Fact and Scrutiny” So this is how Barack Obama is moving into the final 20 months of his dismal neoliberal presidency, which he once (proudly) described as ideologically akin to the Eisenhower White House. He is nauseating much of his own Wall Street-captive party’s electoral base by trying to push through the absurdly regressive, secretive, eco-cidal, and global-corporatist Trans Pacific …
Who’s down with TPP?: Big business wins and democracy loses as both parties lie about free trade – BILL CURRY
If you need further proof of your democracy’s ill health, the Senate provided plenty of it this week as it began debating whether to fast track President Obama’s much-beloved Trans Pacific Trade Partnership (TPP). By passing the bill Congress, would divest itself of its constitutional right to amend the agreement. On Thursday, the “world’s greatest deliberative body” signaled it will …