There is little doubt that Bill Clinton's NAFTA Agreement ended up being flat out disastrous to the US middle and lower economic classes and simultaneously being extremely beneficial to US businesses and especially beneficial to large US Multi-National businesses.
So it is easy to understand why US Labor and well-meaning and usually correct Progressives like Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown might question the economic fairness of the current Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Trade Agreement.
But for anyone to assert that the TPP Trade Agreement would harm the US middle and lower economic classes to the same degree that NAFTA did is just pure lack of objectivity.
The Obama Administration has worked incessantly to exclude from this TPP Trade Agreement provisions that are very harmful to the US middle and lower economic classes and also to include in this TPP Trade Agreement provisions that are helpful to the US middle and lower economic classes.
But still this TPP Trade Agreement should indeed be improved further.
I agree with Warren and Brown probably more than 95% of the time and it would be very helpful if they both would run for US President because they have substantial differences with Hillary Clinton on so many key issues that clearly need to be debated publicly in front of the US Democratic Electorate.
But Warren shouldn't just loudly and repeatedly lambast the Obama Administration on the TPP Trade Agreement and instead should work with the Obama Administration to improve it by making it fairer to the US middle and lower economic classes.
But to be fair, I do think that President Obama has been way too trusting of US large businesses, which have claimed over and over that his actions substantially benefiting them economically ..... to name just three of so many ..... 100% and 50% bonus first-year tax expensing of Tangible Personal Property Investments and the annual Christmas Basket of Tax Extenders .... would definitely trickle down to their US workers. But frankly it just hasn't happened.
Thus when US multinational companies assert that yes this TPP Trade Agreement benefits them markedly but that there is no need to worry about this since they will fairly share this economic largesse with their US workers, the US Government should have the wisdom to realize that unless there are provisions in this TPP Trade Agreement that clearly require a fair sharing of these vast economic benefits with their US workers, that it won't happen.
What is needed in this TPP Trade Agreement are more provisions that directly benefit US workers. Warren and Brown should be recommending specific things to include or exclude that will narrow rather than further expand US Income Inequality. President Clinton's NAFTA was disastrous in this Income Inequality Expansion regard.
Further, large US multinational companies' assertion that the huge US Income Inequality situation is due mainly to US workers not having the necessary high-level work skills is very self-serving, lacks intellectual merit and frankly is extremely mean-spirited. All US workers don't have the same natural ability to acquire many of these very desirable high-level work skills. For example, they can't all be exceptional algorithmic computer coders, no matter how well-educated and how hard they try to be ..... just like I never could dunk a basketball and could not be quick afoot ..... despite working incessantly to both be able to jump high and be quick afoot.
But frankly I do think this ..... the TPP is just a drop in the bucket in driving the desperately-needed much higher real US GDP growth on a sustained basis than is wisely-designed Business Tax Reform, which is designed to massively benefit businesses but also designed to massively and directly benefit the middle and lower US economic classes on much more than just on a trickle down basis. It would be much better if the US Government's focus was on Business Tax Reform rather than on the TPP Trade Partnership, which is designed in its present form to benefit primarily just certain companies having the Obama Administration's ear like Chicago-headquartered Boeing.
