Obamatrade dream team: Michele Bachmann, Elizabeth Warren

Former Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., (left) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. (right)

WASHINGTON – Former Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., may be polar opposites politically, but they see eye-to-eye on one thing: They both consider Obamatrade an abomination.

Bachmann had a succinct summation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, trade deal, telling WND, "I hate it.

Warren said much the same thing in an op-ed for the Washington Post not long ago.

Perhaps not surprisingly, they both fear it will hurt employment by sending American jobs overseas, a critique voiced by a number of conservatives and liberals.

Perhaps more surprisingly, they both fear it will cause a loss of American sovereignty, a criticism expressed much more frequently by those on the right than the left.

Trade is the talk of the town in Washington right now because the House is due to vote any day on the Trade Promotion Authority, or TPA, bill. It would give President Obama the power to negotiate massive trade deals with other countries, cut Congress out of the negotiations and limit lawmakers' participation to a simple yes or no vote when such treaties are concluded.

TPA has passed in the Senate. If it passes in the House, TPP, a far-reaching trade deal between the U.S. and Pacific Rim nations, is considered certain to pass.

And it is TPP that has Bachman, Warren and many others across the political spectrum up in arms.

In fact, TPP has something for almost everyone to hate.

Unions such as the powerful AFL-CIO are concerned it will hurt the American job market and depress wages.

Environmentalists fear the deal will lead to lax protections.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Rush Limbaugh have both criticized the secrecy of the details in the deal, which the public cannot see until 60 days before Congress votes.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., is concerned it will turn over important congressional powers to a new international body, create an economic union akin to a "nascent European Union," and prevent lawmakers from removing any objectionable provisions. He is also alarmed that the deal could be used to accelerate the immigration of foreign workers at a time when Americans are hurting for jobs.

Bachmann told WND she objected to the way TPP would, "Empower the president and cut out congressional influence."

And she was in accord with the unions and Warren when she said it would "lead to American jobs leaving the U.S."

But it was Bachmann's critique of what the deal would do to America's place in the world that really appeared to be echoed by Warren's concerns.

The lioness of the right told WND that the TPP deal "will culminate in less U.S. sovereignty and easier assimilation towards one world, global economic and political structuring. This leads to a further reducing of America's best interests."

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Warren spelled out very similar thinking in great detail in her op-ed piece.

She zeroed in on a little-known aspect of the deal previously leaked to the press called "Investor-State Dispute Settlement," or ISDS, which would especially "undermine U.S. sovereignty."

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.

That provision, Warren wrote, would give "foreign corporations special rights to challenge our laws outside of our legal system," and allow them to potentially "pick up huge payouts from taxpayers – without ever stepping foot in a U.S. court."

To illustrate, she gave a hypothetical example of the U.S. banning a toxic gasoline additive out of health and environmental concerns.

"If a foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it would normally have to challenge it in a U.S. court. But with ISDS, the company could skip the U.S. courts and go before an international panel of arbitrators. If the company won, the ruling couldn’t be challenged in U.S. courts, and the arbitration panel could require American taxpayers to cough up millions – and even billions – of dollars in damages."

It gets worse, she noted.

That arbitration panel wouldn't consist of independent judges, but "highly paid corporate lawyers would go back and forth between representing corporations one day and sitting in judgment the next."

What incentive would they have, she wondered rhetorically, to ever rule against companies with which they might hope to do business the next day?

Worse yet, only international investors would get to use the arbitration panel. And international investors are, by and large, giant corporations.

"So if a Vietnamese company with U.S. operations wanted to challenge an increase in the U.S. minimum wage, it could use ISDS," Warren noted. "But if an American labor union believed Vietnam was allowing Vietnamese companies to pay slave wages in violation of trade commitments, the union would have to make its case in the Vietnamese courts."

Not exactly a level playing field, conservatives would likely agree.

Saying, "This isn't a partisan issue," Warren explicitly called upon right-leaning politicians to oppose the deal.

"Conservatives who believe in U.S. sovereignty should be outraged that ISDS would shift power from American courts, whose authority is derived from our Constitution, to unaccountable international tribunals."

She also saw reasons for Americans of all political persuasions to oppose TPP.

"Libertarians should be offended that ISDS effectively would offer a free taxpayer subsidy to countries with weak legal systems. And progressives should oppose ISDS because it would allow big multinationals to weaken labor and environmental rules."

Meanwhile, another controversial aspect of TPA has suddenly erupted.

Immigration specialists have told Breitbart that leaked details of another trade deal would "massively expand" Obama's power to increase immigration without regard for U.S. law.

The paper reported, "The president’s Trade in Services Act (TiSA) documents, one of the three different close-to-completely-negotiated deals that would be fast-tracked making up the president’s trade agreement, show Obamatrade, in fact, unilaterally alters current U.S. immigration law."

A Republican aide on Capitol Hill told WND, "This is the smoking gun that shows Paul Ryan wasn't telling the truth."

The main Republican proponent of the deal, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., said in April it was "an urban legend" that TPP contained language that would advance Obama's immigration agenda.

Calling it "absolutely not true," Ryan insisted, "There’s no way we (Republicans) would sign off on immigration reform in the trade agreements."

Asked if Ryan wasn't referring solely to TPP and not TiSA, the GOP aide indicated there was no real difference, telling WND, "No. Fast-track moves them all."

If the House approves TPA, that would indeed give Obama the fast-track authority to negotiate far-ranging trade deals, such as TiSA, with no input from Congress other than a yes-or-no vote.

If TPA is approved by Congress, TiSA, like TPP, is considered certain to pass.

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