General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: HRC was critical of TPP before it was cool [View all]Jim Lane
(11,175 posts)Within your excerpt, note where the quotation marks are. Clinton wrote the first part you bolded -- "We should be focused on ending currency manipulation...." It's a generic statement reflecting the view of many (though not all) economists that currency manipulation is a problem.
Then at the end of that paragraph there's a close quotation mark.
You next boldface "*the idea is that the TPP would create more enforceable rules around currency manipulation" but in MaggieD's post that passage isn't inside the quotation marks. It also isn't found in the HuffPo article that MaggieD linked. In other words, MaggieD, after lecturing us about not having read Clinton's book, then juxtaposed a quotation from the book with her (MaggieD's) own fantasy that the TPP would regulate currency manipulation.
In fact, as I pointed out in post #40, the TPP says absolutely nothing about currency manipulation. My source for that statement was Michael Froman, the U.S. Trade Representative -- i.e., the guy who's principally responsible for representing the U.S. in the TPP negotiations. MaggieD responded by quoting some of the people who would like currency manipulation to be regulated, but Clinton doesn't say that it actually is, and Froman says that it actually isn't.
So, what it comes down to is that, when Clinton was Secretary of State, she praised the TPP. When she was writing her book (when she obviously had a view toward her impending campaign), she took note of some of the criticisms of TPP, but only to the extent of agreeing with vague generalities about ideal goals -- a trade deal should generate good jobs, should increase prosperity, should not weaken our national security, should regulate currency manipulation, etc. In a book titled Hard Choices, she limited herself to platitudes that just about everyone could accept. She never applied those standards to the actual negotiations, and she still hasn't. She just made noises that sounded sort of sympathetic to some of the concerns of TPP critics, so that her ardent defenders like MaggieD could suddenly "discover" that Clinton had been leading the opposition for the past decade.
I don't blame you for being confused by all this double-talk and revisionism.