Elizabeth Warren: Clinton needs to be clearer on free trade
The Massachusetts senator wouldn’t say if she would support Hillary’s presidential candidacy.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren refused to answer whether she would endorse Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, in light of the presidential candidate’s vague position on a proposed trade deal.
In an interview with Bloomberg’s Peter Cook, Warren would not say if Clinton’s wait-and-see stance on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would affect her potential support for the former secretary of state.
Clinton told reporters in Iowa on Tuesday she would wait until the controversial trade deal was finished to make a final judgement.
The TPP is a proposed free trade deal with 12 Asia Pacific countries. Negotiations have been kept secret from the public. Only “cleared advisors’’ have had access to the agreement, but are prohibited from publicly sharing specific aspects of the deal.
In an interview Tuesday with The Huffington Post, Warren said she wanted to hear from all the candidates on trade, including Clinton.
“Right now I think it’s important for her to have a chance to lay out her views on a whole host of issues, including trade,’’ she said.
Warren — who has loudly criticized the nature in which the deal is being negotiated — pointed out Clinton already opposed certain provisions in the deal that could undermine health and environmental regulations in the United States.
“She’s always said that she is opposed to that, but I’d like to see her be clearer on that,’’ Warren told Bloomberg.
In her book Hard Choices, Clinton criticized international arbitration panels that granted corporations “more power to overturn health, labor, and environmental rules than consumers have’’ by suing governments. Critics of the TPP believe the free trade agreement could allow the same.
According to majority leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate will vote this week on whether President Barack Obama will be able to introduce and pass the deal without allowing any amendments, also known as “fast-tracking.’’
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