Liberalism in Action: Obummer Supports Slavery

[Clipper Nation]

So the fast track plan to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership has run into a new wrinkle after an amendment passed in the Senate debate: slavery. Yes, really, slavery: the Senate voted for an amendment that would make it more difficult for countries that engage in slavery to be in the TPP, and the Obama administration objected.

That measure would bar governments considered to be complicit in human trafficking from receiving the economic benefits of a fast-tracked trade deal. Menendez, the author of the provision, has described it as a human rights protection that will prevent U.S. workers from competing with modern-day slave labor. The administration has pushed against the provision.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-l...b_7462932.html

[Winehole23]

so, are you for free trade or against it?

why is it any of your business what another country has decided is appropriate for itself?

[Winehole23]

and why would you criticize your own president for standing up for another country's right of self determination?

[Winehole23]

or hinder free compe ion between countries for that matter?

[admiralsnackbar]

or hinder free compe ion between countries for that matter?

Doesn't a trade agreement explicitly limit and define trade between countries? If NAFTA is an analogue, calling it free trade seems somewhat generous. I'll admit I haven't kept up with the issue the past few weeks, but are the terms of the agreement still confidential to all Americans, including legislators? That's worrisome, isn't it? I understand the geopolitical advantages to putting SE Asia under our economic aegis, but I would like to know what it will entail.

[Winehole23]

I would too and I have my concerns about the TPP.

I don't think CN cares about slavery in SE Asia so much as he finds it a convenient club bash Obama with while poking "lib s" in the eye at the same time. Was trying to draw him out of his trite cantankerousness with the remark about free trade, which he professes allegiance to, though I doubt he has any idea what it means.

[admiralsnackbar]

I would too and I have my concerns about the TPP. I don't think CN cares about slavery in SE Asia so much as he finds it a convenient club bash Obama with while poking "lib s" in the eye at the same time. Was trying to draw him out of his trite cantankerousness with the remark about free trade, which he professes allegiance to, though I doubt he has any idea what it means.

Oops... sorry to interrupt, bud.

[Clipper Nation]

so, are you for free trade or against it?

I'm for free trade. TPP is corporate managed trade. There's a difference.

Why does Obummer love slavery so much if he's such an enlightened progressive lib?

[Winehole23]

because Obama's's more pragmatic than doctrinally progressive. getting some SE Asian countries on board with TPP probably does involve turning a blind eye to forced labor.

[boutons_deux]

TPP Could Actually Make Working Conditions Worse in Vietnam
The free market won’t break the country’s manufacturers’ reliance on forced labor, child labor, and dismal wages.

http://www.thenation.com/article/tpp...se-in-vietnam/

TPP s over workers and environment in all countries, not just USA, and enriches/protects/promotes the supremacy of BigCorp over sovereign states.

[Slutter McGee]

TPP Could Actually Make Working Conditions Worse in Vietnam
The free market won’t break the country’s manufacturers’ reliance on forced labor, child labor, and dismal wages.
http://www.thenation.com/article/tpp...se-in-vietnam/

TPP s over workers and environment in all countries, not just USA, and enriches/protects/promotes the supremacy of BigCorp over sovereign states.

There is so much wrong with that article I really don't know what to say.

Now that trade liberalization has devastated American manufacturing,

Why is this a bad thing?

That typically means “competing” downward on safety protections and job security

That is not how compe ion works. If there are safer jobs that pay the same amount or more then people will go towards those jobs.

So when those jobs in Nike’s supply chain land in Vietnam, a top source of US apparel imports, they bring grueling labor conditions.

Which are still better than the average labor conditions in that country.

Nike employs some 330,000 Vietnamese workers, many of them migrants who reflect the country’s yawning rural-urban wealth divide, paying them roughly $132 per month.

Yes, goddamn Nike for giving these people better jobs. I guess they should have to pay them US wages.

US trade representative “should not provide Vietnam with greater market access unless the government ends forced labor and closes the drug detention centers,” and should place Vietnamese cashews on the Labor Department’s blacklist of products linked to forced or child labor.

Gotta, love liberals, lets stop child labor and force thousands of kids into pros ution.

ter McGee

[RandomGuy]

because Obama's's more pragmatic than doctrinally progressive. getting some SE Asian countries on board with TPP probably does involve turning a blind eye to forced labor.

+1