Cables Show Hillary Clinton's State Department Deeply Involved in Trans-Pacific Partnership
"I did not work on TPP," she said after a meeting with leaders of labor unions who oppose the pact. "I advocated for a multinational trade agreement that would 'be the gold standard.' But that was the responsibility of the United States Trade Representative."
But at a congressional hearing in 2011, Clinton told lawmakers that "with respect to the TPP, although the State Department does not have the lead on this -- it is the United States Trade Representative -- we work closely with the USTR." Additionally, State Department cables reviewed by International Business Times show that her agency -- including her top aides -- were deeply involved in the diplomatic deliberations over the trade deal. The cables from 2009 and 2010, which were among a trove of documents disclosed by the website WikiLeaks, also show that the Clinton-run State Department advised the U.S. Trade Representative’s office on how to negotiate the deal with foreign government officials.
In recent months, labor, environmental, public health and consumer advocacy groups have campaigned against the TPP, saying the pact is a stealth attempt by corporations to tilt the rules of international commerce in their favor. They have specifically criticized provisions in the deal -- which are secret but have periodically leaked -- that they say would empower corporations to use international tribunals to attempt to overturn public interest laws. The groups represent many core Democratic Party constituencies that Clinton has been courting in her White House bid, which explains why in the lead-up to the party's primary she has suddenly depicted herself as a critic of the deal. But the cables show that the Clinton-run State Department was indeed a major player in pushing the initiative.
...
http://www.ibtimes.com/cables-show-hillary-clintons-state-department-deeply-involved-trans-pacific-2032948
Link to author's bio: http://www.ibtimes.com/reporters/david-sirota
= new reply since forum marked as read
In the rush to post the latest negative spin on HRC...
DUPE
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251484623
C'mon guys, you need to coordinate these things a little more efficiently. 
Kudos for the preemptive 'Sirota is an undercover paid operative who doesn't want us to know he's a Bernista' strike.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251478784
Hillary Clinton's Business Legacy at the State Department
On her 79th and probably last overseas trip as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton made a pit stop in the Czech Republic. One purpose of the 11-hour visit on Dec. 3, squeezed between NATO talks on the future of Afghanistan and the Syrian civil war, was to make a personal appeal to Czech Prime Minister Petr Nečas on behalf of Westinghouse Electric, which is vying for a contract to build a nuclear power plant there. The company is locked in a $10 billion bidding war with a state-owned Russian energy giant, and Clinton pressed the Czech officials about the wisdom of depending on Vladimir Putin’s Russia for something as essential as electricity. Westinghouse Chief Executive Danny Roderick, who’s still awaiting a decision, says Clinton’s intervention made a big impression on the Czechs: “I was proud that she was in the trenches with me.”
In four years as the nation’s top diplomat, Clinton, who is expected to step down this month, has made dozens of similar sales pitches on behalf of U.S. companies. In 2009 she toured a Boeing plant in Moscow and met with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to persuade state-owned Russian Technologies to buy 50 Boeing 737s instead of jets made by Airbus. That $3.7 billion deal was one of several large contracts Clinton helped clinch for Boeing (BA). In December 2011, Lockheed Martin (LMT) announced a $7.2 billion deal to upgrade Japan’s aging fighter jet fleet, beating out Eurofighter. Clinton advocated for the contract with her Japanese counterpart at the United Nations General Assembly. In February 2012, Space Systems/Loral, which builds communications satellites in Palo Alto, won a contract for equipment to create a national broadband network in Australia. Clinton met with former Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd several times to press for the deal. Last summer, Clinton’s undersecretary for economic growth, Robert Hormats, a former Goldman Sachs (GS) vice chair, took executives from Google (GOOG), MasterCard (MA), and Dow Chemical (DOW) to Myanmar to network with government officials, the first such meeting since sanctions against the country were lifted in 2012.
snip----
She’s pressed the case for U.S. business in Cambodia, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, and other countries in China’s shadow. She’s also taken a leading part in drafting the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the free-trade pact that would give U.S. companies a leg up on their Chinese competitors.
snip----
To ensure the State Department keeps its business focus, Clinton has tried to change the way the 69,000-person global bureaucracy operates. In one directive, which she calls the “Ambassador-as-CEO” memo, she ordered U.S. embassies to make it a priority to help U.S. businesses win contracts. Science officers now extoll American clean-tech companies. Military affairs officers promote U.S. fighter planes.
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-01-10/hillary-clintons-business-legacy-at-the-state-department#p3
