"... the nation’s mayors - most of them Democrats - remain overwhelmingly

[pampango]

committed to free trade in general and the Trans-Pacific Partnership in particular.

Mayors Rise to the Defense of Free Trade

Mayors and private sector leaders in almost all of America’s major metropolitan areas believe they can accelerate growth and expand opportunity by deepening their integration into the world economy, not retreating from it.

Particularly among Democrats, this metropolitan globalism has opened a chasm between the party’s local and national leadership. In the presidential race, Bernie Sanders has unreservedly denounced free trade deals like the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership that President Obama completed last year; Hillary Clinton has feebly bent in that gale, abandoning her own earlier support for the Pacific agreement. Far fewer congressional Democrats than in the 1990s are backing free trade, too.

But the nation’s mayors—most of them Democrats, especially in the larger cities— remain overwhelmingly committed to free trade in general and the Trans-Pacific Partnership in particular. The U.S. Conference of Mayors has officially endorsed the Pacific pact, and it has drawn enthusiastic praise from big-city Democratic mayors such as Atlanta’s Kasim Reed, Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel and Tampa’s Bob Buckhorn.

Blocking trade agreements, Cabaldon notes, won’t stop the changes powered by the unrelenting forces of technological advance and global competition. “The notion that you can just freeze your metropolitan economy in place right now, or the way it used to be, is just a fiction we [mayors] can’t live with,” Cabaldon says. “So it’s a question of what are the tools we have to make the best of the opportunities, reduce the suffering from the dislocation and then figure out how to compete.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/clinton-sanders-free-trade/475113/

[Arizona Roadrunner]

1. Goodby Sovereignty

Say goodbye to minimum wage increases by State and Local governments. All a corporation will do is declare that a raise in minimum wages will adversely effect their profits. How many State and Local governments can afford such a fight by corporations using the TPP ISDS dispute resolution process designed by and for multi-national corporations? You will now have corporations able to use this dispute resolution process to sue all levels and forms of governments. Does this sound like giving up governmental sovereignty for corporate profits? Follow the money..... No wonder the cities are in such bad shape with the level of incompetent leadership that their favoring TPP displays!!!!

[katsy]

2. And damn labor, environmental, sovereignty issues!

These guys haven't laid out one single way the tpp and other trade agreements benefit American families. Not one.

It's fluffy nonsense. I read the whole article. Clueless Morgan's those mayors. No clue or plan. Read the trade agreements. They're fairly clear.

It's a race to the bottom with virtually no labor benefit. So some poor wage slave somewhere across the globe goes from $.10 a day to $.30 a day. That's good. But who are these mayors elected by? You think the American worker wants to hear that we've alleviated poverty in Vietnam but "you're fired".

IMO if you sell a product in a country you make that product in part or whole in that country. Ramp up yourself build your factory without taxpayer subsidies and go for it.

Everything else is corporate welfare.

And not only that.... Shipping these products globally has contributed to climate change.

Just stop. Enough bullshit.

[SamKnause]

3. Fuck Free Trade.

We need Fair Trade.