Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton defended her flip-flop on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) during Tuesday night's first Democratic debate, saying that after she read the details of the largest regional trade accord in history, she realized that it does not meet her standards. But the trade deal has not been made public yet, leaving some, including the White House, wondering how she could have reviewed it already.
"I did say, when I was secretary of state, three years ago, that I hoped it would be the gold standard. It was just finally negotiated last week, and in looking at it, it didn't meet my standards," Clinton said at the debate in Las Vegas, according to The Washington Free Beacon.
A curious reporter then asked White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest how Clinton would have been able to review the text of the secretive deal, considering it has not been made public yet, reported Breitbart.
"Yeah, I noticed that, too," Earnest replied. "It certainly is relevant for you and others to say the details matter in this instance. We would agree; that's why we spent more than five years negotiating the agreement. And we look forward to, as soon as possible, being able to put forward the text of the agreement so that everybody can review it and make their own judgements."
Earnest stressed that the administration will "make the text public, both prior to the president signing it but also prior to the responsibility that Congress has to consider and ratify it."
His comments are a rebuke to Clinton, who, as secretary of state in 2012, explicitly called the same TPP agreement "the gold standard" for free trade deals, but now says she changed her mind after seeing the finalized version, according to the National Review.
Many Democrats have historically been against trade deals, but not the Clintons, who "made their embrace of free trade deals like NAFTA one of the centerpieces of their efforts to yank the Democratic Party rightward," notes Salon's Jack Mirkinson. Former President Bill Clinton, enthusiastically backed by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton, signed NAFTA into law in 1993.
Then, as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton pushed for trade deals with Colombia and South Korea, and whole-heartedly backed the TPP.
"The only times when Clinton has expressed any kind of ambivalence on free trade have come around the periods when she is running for office and needs to get votes from all those Democrats who have gotten the raw end of previous deals," writes Mirkinson. "It's such an open ploy to counter both the rise of staunch TPP critic Bernie Sanders and the possible entry of TPP supporter Joe Biden that it's almost refreshing in its shamelessness...There is absolutely nothing in either her political background or her political history to suggest that she has any real substantive problems with the deal."
