Progressives and liberal lawmakers who are working hard to block the massive free trade deal being negotiated by the Obama administration have just gotten a big boost from someone they’d been aggressively courting: Nancy Pelosi.Despite the fact that woefully little attention has been paid to the deal by mainstream news outlets, liberals, unions and tea party groups — which dubbed fast-track “Obamatrade” — have created a groundswell of grassroots opposition to the TPP that seems to have been heard by enough lawmakers in Washington to make a difference.
In an event with labor officials on Capitol Hill last week, Pelosi delivered her strongest statement yet of opposition to the bill that would grant the Fast Track Authority sought by the administration to negotiate a sweeping free trade deal with a dozen Pacific countries. Multilateral trade agreements like the TPP are virtually impossible to enact without fast track, which allows the executive branch to submit a treaty to Congress for an up or down vote, without amendments.
For this Congress, at least, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (and, presumably, the less well-known Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP) appears to be dead.
