HRC was critical of TPP before it was cool

[Jim Lane]

70. You quote people who are NOT conducting the negotiations.

The APPC and the Congressmembers are not the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Froman, who is the USTR, says it won't be in there.

Then you lash out at a straw man. You refute the argument that we should never have entered into the negotiations. No one has made that argument.

The actual argument (that I would make, anyway) is:
* As of 2010, when the negotiations began, it was reasonable for the Obama administration to investigate the possibility of a mutually beneficial trade deal.
* The U.S. position in the negotiations should have included insistence on certain points, such as that ISDS not give foreign corporations such sweeping power to overturn U.S. environmental laws, that the patent protections not so greatly hinder access to medicines, etc. An attempt to address currency manipulation would also be a reasonable goal.
* Negotiations, by their nature, aren't subject to any one party's unilateral control. Even if the Obama administration took those positions, and tried to get them in the agreement, it's now clear that the effort failed.
* We already know enough about the TPP, through the leaks of near-final drafts that haven't been denied by anyone knowledgeable, to know that it will do the U.S. much more harm than good.