The country’s top executives from Wall Street and corporate America are working directly with President Obama and members of his cabinet and appointees on passing a free-trade agenda that is unpopular among the president’s natural constituents of democrats, labor unions, environmental and consumer groups and the American public as a whole.
[by Richard McCormack | December 17, 2014 | Manufacturing & Technology News]
Obama, his staff and members of Congress met directly with CEOs of major multinational corporations in Washington, D.C., on December 11 to discuss the “ground game” — as his aides described it — needed to persuade Americans on the benefits of free trade and to lobby Congress on passage of Trade Promotion Authority [TPA] and the Trans-Pacific Partnership [TPP] next year.
Under the auspices of the December meeting of the President’s Export Council, Obama lambasted opponents of the free-trade agenda he adopted from Presidents Bush and Clinton, arguing that opponents are ignorant of the benefits of trade and admonished them to back off in their effort to oppose passage of TPA and TPP by stating: “Don’t fight the last war. You already have.”
