Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO and 2016 Republican presidential candidate, is calling on President Barack Obama to publicly release the text of Obamatrade immediately.
“Of course, I support free and fair trade,” Fiorina said in an email to Breitbart News.
But President Obama has made lofty promises before and we’ve learned with this White House that the devil is in the details. And the details are frequently very different than the lofty goals with which he describes the deal. So I’d like President Obama to tell us what’s in his trade deal before we grant him this broad fast track authority. So far, though, he’s been unwilling to do that and Hillary won’t even take a position on it. That should concern us. Mr. President, if you want TPA to pass, please just tell us what is in TPP.
Fiorina’s call for transparency on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) Pacific Rim trade deal comes right after the U.S. Senate passed Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) to fast track that deal—and right before the House is angling to take up the deal.
It also comes on the heels of revelations that several lieutenants of House Speaker John Boehner—who supports the deal and is using his allies like Majority Whip Steve Scalise and Rules Committee chairman Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), the two specific lieutenants in question—haven’t read the text of TPP, which TPA would ensure the passage of.
Fiorina’s 2016 competition also has some issues on this matter.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), both of whom voted for Obamatrade in the Senate, are refusing to answer whether they read the TPP text before voting for this.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who voted for it, read the TPP text before doing so and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is the only Republican running for president in Congress currently who voted against Obamatrade.
Paul went to the secret room to read the bill—which only members of Congress and certain cleared staffers with high-level security clearances are allowed to do—and when he came out he told Breitbart News he doesn’t think there’s anything in there that can’t be made public before Congress votes on TPA.
Most of the 2016 presidential field stands with Fiorina and Paul against Obamatrade. Dr. Ben Carson, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and real estate mogul Donald Trump have each come out against the deal very publicly as well.
Fiorina, in an interview with Breitbart News at the South Carolina Freedom Summit last month, compared Obamatrade to Obamacare—noting that the secretive process is extraordinarily troubling.
Free trade is a good thing and I would love to be able to support this thing, but unfortunately we don’t know what’s in it—and that’s the problem. We’ve seen too many deals in this administration where they sound like a good thing—remember Obamacare? The goal sounded great and then it turned out the details were something very different. And so, I think we need to see the details. It’s hard for me to understand why the president—who’s pitching this deal so hard—won’t just give us some understanding of what’s in it. For example, one of the purposes of this deal was to solidify our leadership in a region so that we could push back a little against a newly assertive China. Now we’re hearing that maybe China could join this deal in a couple years. Is that true? Is it not? I don’t know. We need to know those kinds of details, which are pretty important.
What’s interesting here is that just this week, President Obama confirmed that China has been angling to get into the deal—a concern Fiorina raised weeks ago.
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