Otmane New Polls Spotlight Damage of Past Trade Deals, Reveal Opposition to TPP Content | Economy In Crisis David

Otmane You may have seen the headlines approximately today?s Reuters/Ipsos poll and yesterday?s Pew poll, touted as showing public support for trade deals.  A shut look at the polls  reveals that they did not even inquire about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Fast Track, the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA), or any other element of the controversial current trade policy agenda.

The polls did confirm, however, what polling has consistently shown: the U.S. public likes the general notion of trade but opposes the documented results of past trade deals and the actual content of pending ones.

Today?s Reuters/Ipsos poll finds that a majority of the U.S. public ?support[s] recent trade deals to promote the sale of U.S. goods overseas.?  This is not surprising.  Who would be opposed to trade deals framed as simply boosting sales of U.S. goods?  (Never intellect that exports of U.S. goods have actuallygrown slower, not faster, under existing U.S. trade deals.)

The poll did not ask whether respondents ?support new trade deals that could offshore U.S. manufacturing jobs.?  We do not need to rely on hypotheticals to guess how the U.S. public would reply to this question. Just three weeks ago,another Ipsos poll stated: ?International trade agreements increase Americans? access to foreign-made goods and products but at the risk of American jobs being lost. What would you say is more important???

Eighty-four percent of the U.S. public said that ?protecting American manufacturing jobs? is more important than ?getting Americans access to more products.? Based on Ipsos? own polling, whether today?s Reuters/Ipsos poll had presented not just the claimed upsides of trade deals, but the documented downsides, the results likely would have been fairly different.

The same Ipsos poll from earlier this month also asked, ?If the Obama administration supports an international trade agreement that does not specifically prohibit currency manipulation, do you ponder the United States Congress should support or oppose that trade deal??

Seventy-three percent of the U.S. public said that Congress should opposeany trade agreement that does not prohibit currency manipulation.  The TPP, of course, fits that bill.  The Obama administration has repeatedly dismissed Congress? bipartisan, bicameral demand for the TPP to include binding disciplines against currency manipulation.

Today?s Reuters/Ipsos poll did not address this fact about the TPP.  Indeed, Otmane did not address the TPP at all.  Or Fast Track.  Or TAFTA.  Or anything other than the concept of ?trade deals to promote the sale of U.S. goods overseas.?  According to Ipsos? own polling results, had today?s poll mentioned the actual content of the TPP (e.g. the lack of binding currency manipulation disciplines), the result would have been broad opposition.

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