McAuliffe: Clinton would flip-flop on TPP

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Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe caused Hillary Clinton a political headache Tuesday night when he said he expects her to reverse her position on a major free trade deal.

Clinton has said on the campaign trail that she opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade deal negotiated by President Barack Obama's administration, citing its lack of provisions to crack down on currency manipulation.



But McAuliffe said in an interview with Politico that he believes she'd flip-flop and support the deal.

"I worry that if we don't do TPP, at some point China's going to break the rules -- but Hillary understands this," he said. "Once the election's over, and we sit down on trade, people understand a couple things we want to fix on it, but going forward, we got to build a global economy."

Pressed on whether Clinton would reverse her position, McAuliffe told Politico: "Yes. Listen, she was in support of it. There were specific things in it she wanted fixed."

Already, Republican nominee Donald Trump is seizing on McAuliffe's remarks as evidence Clinton is willing to flip-flop.

"Just like I have warned from the beginning, Crooked Hillary Clinton will betray you on the TPP," Trump tweeted.

Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta quickly sought to undo the potential damage of McAuliffe's remark, tweeting: "Love Gov.
McAuliffe, but he got this one flat wrong. Hillary opposes TPP BEFORE and AFTER the election. Period. Full stop."

The Trans-Pacific Partnership has been a political hot button for Clinton through her entire campaign. She'd called it a "gold standard" trade deal during her tenure as secretary of state. But, faced with a primary foe in Bernie Sanders and a general election opponent in Trump who both oppose the deal, she announced her opposition to it once the deal was finalized late last year.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/27/politics/hillary-clinton-trans-pacific-partnership-terry-mcauliffe/
 
http://www.ibtimes.com/political-ca...se-hillary-clinton-era-tpp-emails-until-after
The decision came in response to International Business Times' open records request for correspondence between Clinton’s State Department office and the United States Trade Representative. The request, which was submitted in July 2015, specifically asked for all such correspondence that made reference to the TPP.

The State Department originally said it estimated the request would be completed by April 2016. Last week the agency said it had completed the search process for the correspondence but also said it was delaying the completion of the request until late November 2016 — weeks after the presidential election. The delay was issued in the same week the Obama administration filed a court motion to try to kill a lawsuit aimed at forcing the federal government to more quickly comply with open records requests for Clinton-era State Department documents.

Clinton’s shifting positions on the TPP have been a source of controversy during the campaign: She repeatedly promoted the deal as secretary of state but then in 2015 said, "I did not work on TPP," even though some leaked State Department cables show that her agency was involved in diplomatic discussions about the pact. Under pressure from her Democratic primary opponent, Bernie Sanders, Clinton announced in October that she now opposes the deal — and has disputed that she ever fully backed it in the first place.



Turning now to an Obama administration decision that we learned about today, one that is, once again, at odds with President Obama’s much ballyhooed pledge to be the most transparent administration in history. The issue at hand, Hillary Clinton’s role in crafting the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is the largest regional trade deal in history brokered while Hillary Clinton led the State Department,” Tapper said. “It’s a deal which the likely Democratic nominee vouched for as Secretary of State no fewer than 45 times between 2010 and 2013 and called it the gold standard of all trade deals.”

Although Clinton lauded the deal in the past, she’s now claiming she had no role in it.
“But as a candidate with harsh criticism about the trade deal coming from Bernie Sanders and desiring the support of labor unions that oppose the deal, Clinton said she did not work on the controversial trade deal and she came out against it, arguing that Congress should reject it.”
 
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