Former Clinton Labor Secretary and NAFTA booster Robert Reich is calling for fast track and the TPP, which he calls a corporate Trojan horse, to be defeated.
The comment made this week by Glencore's director of agriculture products, Chris Mahoney, that "high prices, lots of volatility, a lot of dislocation, tightness and a lot of arbitrage opportunities" made a "good" environment for Glencore, prompted the UN and leading aid agencies to call for fast-track reform of the international regulations.
Before even Congress votes on any final trade agreement, the President has asked for "fast track authority" (also called Trade Promotion Authority or TPA) to complete TPP negotiations with 11 other countries.
For fast track -- now called "Trade Promotion Authority --will lAuthority --wills.
President Obama is pushing hard for "fast track" approval of his Trans-Pacific Partnership ("TPP") Agreement, calling for a simple up or down vote without the possibility of amendments or floor debate.
The latest push came early this month at Chequers, the country residence of the British prime minister, David Cameron, who joined President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan in calling for fast-track peace talks.
But winning congressional approval for fast track is looking difficult.
President Carter's call for a "fast track" development of synthetic fuels was, in large measure, a response to a political problem his own waning prospects for re-election in 1980.
It has had the power to call for a fast track court to issue the death penalty to the rapists in Delhi, and it could have the power to make Narendra Modi India's next prime minister, or indeed -- and more consistent with the emotion and empathy behind its support for Nirbhaya and the hundreds of men, women and children in Gujarat -- demand from him an apology.
Remember that within beats of defending the middle class in the State of the Union, he was calling for the fast tracking of new trade agreements that will make the rich richer but also could help destroy what little is left of American manufacturing and the jobs that go with it.
