Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) this week made clear that it is more important to her to ensure the Trans-Pacific Partnership will deliver benefits to the U.S. middle class and improve U.S. wages than to pass it this year as negotiated because it is a priority for President Obama.
[Inside U.S. Trade| June 3, 2016 | Inside U.S. Trade]
Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) this week made clear that it is more important to her to ensure the Trans-Pacific Partnership will deliver benefits to the U.S. middle class and improve U.S. wages than to pass it this year as negotiated because it is a priority for President Obama.
“I do know it is a priority for the president, but again for me this is about the global economy,” she said in a June 2 interview with a Michigan television station. “Are we creating a race up, lifting wages, protecting our air and water, making sure that we are protecting the middle class?”
She noted that TPP is a trade agreement that covers about 40 percent of the economies of the world, “so it’s really important that it be done right” for American business, workers and farmers. In light of the size of the deal taking a stand on it is a “very big decision.”
Stabenow said that she cannot see herself supporting the TPP as written because it fails to tackle currency manipulation, which she said was “one of the biggest issues that we’ve heard from the auto industry.” She said that Ford Motor Company has been out front about the failure to include currency manipulation disciplines in TPP, which she said was a way Japan kept the price of its cars artificially low.
She said this is a big issue not only about getting U.S. cars into Japan, but also about competing with Japan in third country markets, including India and Brazil.
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