[U].S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., cheered an unlikely ally on Friday, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, for his promise not to bring the Trans-Pacific Partnership to the Senate floor for a vote in the lame duck congressional session.
Sanders railed against the proposed trade agreement throughout his presidential run, during which primary opponent Hillary Clinton pivoted away from her earlier support for it. Although Clinton said the deal “sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade” in 2012, she came out against it in October, diverging from President Barack Obama, who is pushing hard for its passage to secure his trade legacy.
McConnell had also voiced support for the deal in the past, though Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has taken a similar tone to Sanders in attacking it as a job-killing agreement that would move employment overseas and shutter more American factories. Sanders and Trump both won primaries and caucuses in Rust Belt states that have seen a decline in manufacturing jobs.
“What changed between then and now is that the American people have sent a loud and clear message to Sen. McConnell and others that they are tired of big corporations sending American manufacturing plants and jobs to low-wage nations overseas,” Sanders said in a statement Friday.
While McConnell said the trade deal in its current form “has some serious flaws,” he said he was open to supporting an amended agreement.
“It can be massaged, changed, worked on during the next administration,” he said in Louisville during a breakfast with the Kentucky State Farm Bureau. “So, I hope America will stay in the trade business.”
While Sanders praised McConnell’s words, he expressed confidence the agreement could be defeated if it did come up for a vote.
A major focus of Sanders’ new political organization Our Revolution is issues advocacy, and he said during a kickoff event Wednesday that he planned to direct resources to killing the TPP in Congress.
“I plan to work with trade unions all over this country, environmental groups all over this country, religious groups all over this country to do everything that I can as Vermont’s senator to defeat the TPP if it comes up in Congress in the lame duck session,” he said.
