May 20, 2015
Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus is unhappy with Senator Elizabeth Warren’s opposition to the trade agreement. In particular Marcus is upset that Senator Warren has complained that the deal is secret, calling this a bogus argument. I won’t go through the whole piece (this stuff has been addressed many places), but I do want to deal with one point Marcus raises.
She noted that Warren pointed out that President Bush had made the draft text of the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement public, but then tells readers:
“the countries involved in the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreed to make initial proposals public.”
This gets us to the Incredible Hulk theory of international relations. For those not familiar with comic book story or movie, the Incredible Hulk is the huge green monster that mild mannered physicist Bruce Banner turns into when he gets angry. This captures Marcus’ theory of international relations.
When the United States really wants something, for example if it wants European countries to crack down on bank accounts that might be used to launder money for Al Qaeda, the administration makes demands and gets them met. This is the Incredible Hulk part of the story. But then we get a situation where President Obama would really like to make the draft text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership available to the public, but our negotiating partners just won’t let us. This is the story of mild-mannered physicist Bruce Banner.
So the question everyone should ask themselves is, “do we think that if President Obama called our negotiating partners in the TPP and said that he really wants to make a draft public (it will be public soon anyhow), that all or any of them would refuse?”
My answer to this question is “no,” but if you want to believe otherwise, I have lots of comic books for you.
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