In major blow to Obama, Clinton opposes Trans Pacific Partnership
US Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton has come out against the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) in what is considered a major blow to fellow Democrat US President Barack Obama.
"As of today, I am not in favor of what I have learned about it," Clinton said in a Wednesday interview with PBS in the US state of Iowa.
The Obama-backed TPP is a secretive trade agreement between several Pacific Rim countries concerning a variety of matters in regard to economic policy.
"I have said from the very beginning that we had to have a trade agreement that would create good American jobs, raise wages and advance our national security and I still believe that is the high bar we have to meet," Clinton said. "I don't believe it's going to meet the high bar I have set."
Her campaign also released a statement reiterating her stance, which emerged against the White House efforts to win congressional approval for the deal.
“Based on what I know so far, I can’t support this agreement,” the former secretary of state said despite the approach of the Obama administration she once served as the secretary of state. “I appreciate the hard work that President Obama and his team put into this process and recognize the strides they made.”
During a trip to Australia in 2012, the then secretary of state had backed the agreement, calling it the “gold standard” for trade deals.
In June, only 28 Democrats in the US House of Representatives voted in favor of expedited powers to approve the pact.
The deal would supposedly lower barriers to trade among 12 states around the Pacific, including Japan, Vietnam, and Malaysia.
In 2014, renowned scientist Noam Chomsky warned that the TPP is "designed to carry forward the neoliberal project to maximize profit and domination, and to set the working people in the world in competition with one another so as to lower wages to increase insecurity."
In 2013, Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz warned that based on leaked drafts of the TPP, it presented "grave risks" and "serves the interests of the wealthiest.
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