This week at St. Anselm College in Manchester, NH at the “Politics and Eggs Breakfast,” when asked about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), a potential candidate for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, said, “If we had a president who I thought we could trust to put American interest first.”
He added he would be for it, but unfortunately he has “real concerns about this president’s ability to negotiate anything that represents a great deal for America.”
Christie said, “I’m generally in favor of trade and free trade. Of course the devil is always in the details. I’m not a huge truster in this president’s ability to negotiate on behalf of American interests. I’m someone who believes in trade promotion authority. But I don’t know that I would give this president trade promotion authority. This is the same guy who’s negotiating such a great deal that Iran is going to be a nuclear power. And so trade deals I think are important to expand America markets to bring our products to other people and theirs to us and to allow America competition to be able to continue to be what drives us to be the number one economy in the world.”
He continued, “But I want to make sure the deals we negotiate are fair deals for the America people and American workers. And so if we had a president who I thought we could trust to put American interest first at the table and remember who you are representing, I’d be for trade promotion authority. I’m sure we could get TPP in the kind of shape that it needs to be to be able to be a force for good in the world, not only for us but for other countries that we engage in the partnership with. But I have real concerns about this president’s ability to negotiate anything that represents a great deal for America. I think the record is pretty complete with the details. I don’t think that’s a partisan comment. I think it’s a factual one. So that would be my concern about it, but in general, yes, I favor trade.”
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