Presidential politics playing trade spoiler

The Trans-Pacific Partnership — the 12-country trade pact so important to Washington state’s ports and farmers — unfortunately is getting caught in the cross-fire of presidential politics.

Protectionism seems to be the name of the game with Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, who have come out against the TPP as a way to make inroads with labor unions and workers who feel trade agreements have sent jobs overseas. (Clinton supported TPP before she opposed it.)

Republican candidates, including front-runner Donald Trump, have mainly attacked it because President Obama wants it, and in today’s highly polarized atmosphere that is reason enough.

Opponents ignore how important it is in today’s global economy to reduce trade barriers that are preventing many American products from being sold to Pacific Rim nations due to burdensome tariffs. Washington, the most trade-dependent state, would benefit overnight with expanded markets for its apples, wheat, potatoes, software and other goods. Forty percent of jobs in this state are linked to trade, which adds more than $100 billion to Washington’s economy annually. That would only rise with ratification of the TPP.

Nationally, according to an economic analysis by the American Farm Bureau Federation, implementing the TPP would boost annual net farm income in the United States by $4.4 billion. Failure to ratify the pact would have negative consequences as other TPP signees take advantage of the deal to expand their markets with each other — leaving the U.S. out of the loop.

Trump revealed his ignorance about the TPP in a November debate. He didn’t seem to understand that the signees don’t include China, and that one of the pact’s goals is to counter that country’s aggression by creating stronger ties to other Asian nations. China’s leaders side with the presidential candidates in opposing the U.S.’s expanded trade relations in a part of the world it views as its back yard.

The conventional thinking is that Congress isn’t expected to pass the TPP this year. But the conventional thinkers probably wouldn’t expect that one of the main cheerleaders for the pact is a Washington state Republican, Congressman Dave Reichert of Auburn. He’s backed by eight others among Washington’s 12-member congressional delegation, if their votes on earlier legislation giving the president fast-track authority to negotiate the TPP are any indication.

In an interview Tuesday in The News Tribune, Reichert says he’s been a leader on the TPP because it would create the kind of family wage jobs this state needs and “You can’t roll back the clock on a global economy.”

If only everyone in the delegation — and running for president — took his pragmatic view.

This story was originally published February 23, 2016 at 9:00 AM with the headline "Presidential politics playing trade spoiler."