Democratic Congressman John Garamendi broke with President Obama and pro-business Democrats in excoriating the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal being negotiated in secret with 17, mainly Asian, nations.
Appearing on C-Span’s Washington Journal program Wednesday, Garamendi said a bill giving so-called fast track negotiating authority to the president abrogates power bestowed on Congress by the US Constitution.
If what is being called “trade promotion authority” is approved, Congress would face an up-or-down vote on the treaty’s final draft and be forbidden from amending it.
Procedural criticisms were only part of Garamendi’s critique. The congressman, who represents the Delta and parts of the Valley, said that past trade agreements have been a disaster for working people around the nation.
“Since the big free trade movement, beginning with NAFTA, World Trade Organization before that, we have lost over 8 million manufacturing jobs in the United States,” he said. “We’ve basically seen as a result of these trade deals, the flight of American capital to the lowest wage companies in the world.”
Garamendi said that if approved, American workers would find themselves competing with for jobs with Vietnamese workers who Garamendi said are paid about 55 cents an hour.
President Obama and pro-business Democrats, along with most mainstream Republicans, favor the treaty and fast track authority. Liberal Democrats and Libertarian Republicans generally oppose it.
