Politics

Why Is Hillary Throwing Obama's Core Legacy on Free Trade Under the Bus?

She was for the TPP before she was against it

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President Obama stuck up for Hillary Clinton when the subject of E-mailGate came up on 60 Minutes — noting that

Hillary Clinton
cobblucas / Foter / CC BY

her private server hadn't jeopardized national security. But that doesn't mean that cutthroat Hillary is going to return the favor. Without compunctions, she has thrown the free trade agreement between America and Pacific Rim countries called the TPP under the bus even though it is supposed to be Obama's crowning legacy on the issue. What's more, she actually helped negotiate it, calling it the "gold standard" of trade deals.

Yet there she was during this week's presidential debate pulling a blatant switcheroo. Why was she doing it, asked Anderson Cooper? I can't, she said, "look in the eyes of any middle-class American and say 'this will help raise your wages.'"

But the fact of the matter is that if TPP is anything like NAFTA that her husband negotiated and she defended, then it'll actually help the middle-class, I note in my column at The Week. One would have expected NAFTA to result in the "giant sucking sound" of jobs fleeing to Mexico because labor unions had bid up wages of American workers to stratospheric heights.

But it didn't. Why?

Go here to find out.