When people are trying to figure out how far to the left Hillary Clinton will run her campaign, the huge trade deal the Obama administration is negotiating with some Asian countries, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, has been a timely, important issue to gauge her on, because lefty groups are pretty much opposed to the deal and upset with President Obama about it.
Some people are reading Clinton’s two comments on the issue as evidence that she’s willing to express some skepticism of the deal, but it’s worth pointing out that she has said nothing meaningful about it — as she’s said nothing meaningful about any policy issue.
Her first comment, from a campaign spokesman:
She will be watching closely to see what is being done to crack down on currency manipulation, improve labor rights, protect the environment and health, promote transparency and open new opportunities for our small businesses to export overseas.
Highlighting these issues is meaningless — these are the topics that anyone remotely left of center would look at when evaluating a trade agreement.
Her more recent comment is even more contentless:
Any trade deal has to produce jobs and raise wages and increase prosperity and protect our security.
Is there anyone on the left or right who would remotely disagree with this sentiment? The debate, of course, is whether a deal like the TPP will indeed do these things.
Now, the deal isn’t public (or finalized) yet — there are indeed some pressing questions that haven’t been resolved. That hasn’t stopped Elizabeth Warren from pillorying the deal based on what we know will be in it, though.
And there’s a number of questions Hillary as a candidate could be taking a position on already: Should the deal be fast-tracked — meaning once it’s negotiated on, it just gets an up-or-down vote rather than being subject to amendments — as Congress is planning to do? Should free trade be a key economic-policy goal for the U.S.? (This may sound absurd but there are plenty on the left who don’t think it should be, which has basically always been the position of labor unions.) Does she support the idea of a free-trade deal with Europe, too? Should we sign onto a deal that includes investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms, which wouldn’t be unprecedented for the U.S. but greatly upsets people like Elizabeth Warren?
She hasn’t even hinted at where she stands on these questions; she’s just put a teensy bit of space between her and President Obama on this issue without saying anything about where she stands.
The Clinton campaign has actually been explicit that it isn’t really going to talk policy until this summer. But this is absurd, given the resources they have and how long Hillary has been around. No one seriously believes someone in an auto-body shop in Iowa is going to enlighten her about what to think about trade. Hillary no doubt thinks she can rely on this kind of pabulum for a while, because she’s the presumptive nominee, and she’s probably right. But everyone ought to call her rhetoric what it is: completely devoid of substance.