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Kathy Castor “leaning no” regarding her vote on the Trans Pacific Partnership

in The Bay and the 'Burg/Top Headlines by

Tampa Democratic Representative Kathy Castor says she is leaning against giving “fast track” authority to President Obama for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade deal involving the U.S. and 11 South American and Pacific Rim nations that if enacted would be the largest trade deal since the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Mexico, Canada and the U.S.

Last week leaders of tax committees in both the House and Senate agreed to legislation that gives Congress the right to vote on the trade deal — but prevents them from including amendments that could stop its progress.

Critics deb it “NAFTA on steroids,” and claim it will send more jobs overseas and weaken environmental and labor law standards. The deal has been negotiated secretly, something that bothers Castor.

“Here’s the issue,” she told Florida Politics on Tuesday. “As a member of Congress, we really haven’t had access to the actual agreements. Now there’s a committee meeting today in the US Senate. I’m going to monitor that and see what happens with it. I’m going to get all the materials that I can, but without being able to review these agreements, it’s very difficult to say ‘okay.'”

In a guest editorial last month in the Washington Post, economic professors David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson wrote that the TPP would actually be good for U.S. workers because it A) would promote trade in knowledge-intensive services in which U.S. companies exert a strong comparative advantage, B) That killing it wouldn’t bring any more factors jobs to America, and C) would also raise regulatory rules and standards for several of China’s key trading partners, which in turn would pressure China to meet some of those standards and stop its attempts to “game global trade ” to impede foreign multinational companies.

In a separate story in the Post, Labor Secretary Thomas Perez said he shared the skepticism with his friends about NAFTA, which he describes as “woefully weak in protecting workers and on the enforcement side.” He argued that the TPP will be able to “fix” NAFTA, claiming that the TPP calls on countries to enact or make sure that they already have meaningful labor protections, such as the freedom of association, health and safety, acceptable conditions of work in place to part of the pact.

But independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders calls the TPP, ” a fundamentally flawed agreement, a part of a history of flawed agreements.” The Nation reports that under the deal, Buy America and other Buy Local procurement preferences that invest in the US economy would be banned, and “sweat-free,” human rights or environmental conditions on government contracts could be challenged.

Congresswoman Castor says the issue for her is that even though the economy has rebounded to a certain extent from the recession of a few years ago, “There’s still a lot of economic uncertainty, and when you talk about trade, for so many people that means, ‘oh gosh, off-shoring of jobs.'”

“I’ve got to get into this agreement and see,” she says. “Does it open up markets? Or will it build on the economic fears of so many people that it will weaken our economic position?”

The answer for her, at this point, is the latter.

Mitch Perry has been a reporter with Extensive Enterprises since November of 2014. Previously, he served as five years as the political editor of the alternative newsweekly Creative Loafing. He also was the assistant news director with WMNF 88.5 FM in Tampa from 2000-2009, and currently hosts MidPoint, a weekly talk show, on WMNF on Thursday afternoons. He began his reporting career at KPFA radio in Berkeley. He's a San Francisco native who has now lived in Tampa for 15 years and can be reached at [email protected]

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