It's not a question of blaming trade deals OR blaming automation.

[JHan]

64. Well I never "attacked" Trumka...

"The danger of TPP is not the level of reduction of tariffs. Show me where the AFL-CIO said that. So you attack the AFL-CIO's argument with a straw man, by citing an argument never made. Classic exemplar of a weak argument"

I was referring to his point about Currency Manipulation, and included the WaPo link to address some of his other concerns. So it wasn't a strawman at all.

And as I said, quantitative easing is an indirect form of currency manipulation - it impacts currency. The link you provided explained the reasons and justifications for it, and I'm not surprised it came from congress, nonetheless the effects of quantitative easing are there to see: the difference between easing and currency manipulation is slimmer than a hair's breadth : http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/090915/quantitative-easing-vs-currency-manipulation.asp#ixzz4PkKiOb98

"Quantitative easing, while considered an unconventional monetary policy, is just an extension of the usual business of open market operations. Open market operations is the mechanism by which a central bank either expands or contracts the money supply through the buying or selling of government securities in the open market. The goal is to reach a specified target for short-term interest rates that will have an effect on all other interest rates within the economy.

While expansionary open market operations increase the money supply and decrease interest rates in an attempt to stimulate economic activity, the mechanism has limited effect when short-term interest rates are near or below zero. To lessen this ineffectiveness at the zero-bound, more unconventional methods of monetary policy need to be used such as quantitative easing, which targets commercial bank and private sector assets with much longer maturities. Quantitative easing occurs on a much larger scale than smaller scale, week-to-week open market operations.

Quantitative easing is meant to stimulate a sluggish economy when typical expansionary open market operations have failed. With an economy in recession and interest rates at the zero-bound, the Federal Reserve conducted three rounds of quantitative easing in 2009, 2010 and 2012, adding more than $3.5 trillion to its balance sheet by October 2014. Intended to stimulate the domestic economy, these stimulus measures had indirect affects on the exchange rate, putting downward pressure on the dollar.

Such pressure on the dollar wasn't totally negative in the eyes of U.S. policymakers since it would make exports relatively cheaper, which is another way to help stimulate the economy. However, the move came with criticisms from policymakers in other countries complaining that a weakened U.S. dollar was hurting their exports, as well as flooding their economies with excessive amounts of capital that could lead to bubbles in asset prices."

Currency manipulation laws in an agreement with 12 Pacific Rim countries is over reach and currency manipulation won't iron out the wrinkles in global commerce. A country may devalue to boost its exports, or use any other artificial methods to stimulate their economy. If we demand that countries not devalue their currency either up or down, our consumers and businesses will feel the effects if they rely on imported goods from these countries because, quite rightly, those countries will retaliate.

"You want to trade the loss of our democracy for a less than one percent gain in GDP? Those are values I'm not down with. "

It doesn't violate our democracy. This is an argument against free trade used against NAFTA, and every free trade agreement that rears its head. No foreign government or body can compel us to act in ways we don't wish.Scott Lincicome and Bill Watson succinctly put it:

"..TPA and U.S. trade agreements are not an assault on American sovereignty, contrary to the “Obamatrade” clams. FTAs embody unenforceable promises governments make to each other. Domestic governments—here, Congress—retain the sole authority to ignore those promises and violate international commitments, and they (unfortunately) do so frequently. Foreign governments cannot force their trading partners to comply with the terms of an FTA—the only extra-national consequence of a violation is that other parties to the agreement may abrogate their commitments in a commensurate amount (e.g., by raising tariffs on imports from the United States from levels that were lowered in the FTA). Moreover, every U.S. trade agreement permits the parties to act outside the agreed disciplines in the name of, among other things, national security, public health and safety, or environmental protection. Thus, the idea that TPA and FTAs violate U.S. sovereignty or regulatory autonomy is patently false.

The political wrangling that goes into creating reciprocal trade agreements is messy, but they have thus far proven to be the most successful mechanism to substantially reduce U.S. trade barriers. Without our FTAs, protectionist rent-seeking could close the United States off from the global economy, and Americans would be stuck working harder for less money. If politicians were angels, FTAs wouldn’t be necessary. But we all know better, now, don’t we?"

And if those authors are too libertarian for you, even Vox took issue with the opposition to the TPP by Sanders ( and others on the left) http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11139718/bernie-sanders-trade-global-poverty

While there maybe a international tribunal for disputes, they don't impact domestic law. International Tribunals already exist, via treaties, and Free Trade Agreements aren't even as binding as Treaties.

Nothing in the TPP negotiations pointed to us lowering our standards regarding labor or environment. In fact, the pressure is on countries in the TPP region to raise the floor to our labor standards.

And as for manufacturing , it continues apace. The crux of the problem isn't the trade deal but adjusting to the shifting sands of the job market. From the atlantic just two days ago:https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/01/america-is-still-making-things/512282/

"This is a key point often missed in the debate over whether it’s trade or automation that has displaced American jobs. Automation and trade are deeply entwined phenomena; trade increases pressures to automate or export simple jobs, but also incentivizes the U.S. to specialize and create more high-paying jobs.

In some ways, the whole narrative that manufacturing is disappearing is flawed, Hicks says. Manufacturing, like most other industries in America, has modernized and become more sophisticated over the decades. To be sure, it employs millions fewer people than it did in the past. But manufacturing still makes up about 12.5 percent of America’s gross domestic product, the same as it did in 1960. People who can work in modern manufacturing—those with computer skills and advanced degrees—are in demand. The average manufacturing worker now makes $26 an hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The catch is that traditional manufacturing workers don’t have those advanced degrees, and can’t get those jobs. “Maybe the problem isn’t so much the industry job losses, but that the men and women in manufacturing had much poorer educational attainment, and had been in less technically dynamic workplaces, Hicks told me. “ So, when the world changed, they could not.”
Half a century ago, almost no manufacturing workers went to college; they graduated from high school and went straight to the factory, where they could find a good job for life. Now, it’s becoming more and more common for manufacturers to hire workers who have some higher education. Nearly 20 percent of the manufacturing workforce had a bachelor’s degree in 2012, up from 16 percent in 2000. Just 10 percent had less than a high-school education, down from 14 percent in 2000. Nearly 9 percent of the manufacturing workforce has a graduate or professional degree."

And most importantly:

"Unskilled jobs in the industry have been disappearing for decades as technology and globalization have made them obsolete. Yet technology is also enabling new types of jobs that provide a career for people who know how to use it. The hard part is what happens to everyone else.


IMHO, the "what happens to everyone else" is where we can start the conversation about a Universal Basic Income.