Democrats divided on free trade agreement in South Florida

Although a majority of House Democrats rejected President Barack Obama on expanding his trade negotiating power, two of the three Democrats who met the news media hours before the Florida Democratic Party’s big summer dinner did and do support the Trans Pacific Partnership.

“We are a big tent party, and we have wide-ranging views on the best approach to dealing with trade,” U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz told reporters a few hours before the Florida Democratic Party’s annual Leadership Blue Gala.

Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic National Committee’s chairwoman and a U.S. Representative from South Florida,  was one of the few House Democrats to support Obama on the trade issue Friday. She said she did so because it was an opportunity to underwrite a Democratic president “who shares our values and focuses on making sure we have labor and environmental protection in place.”

But trying to balance the division in the progressive movement about the trade deal, Wasserman Schultz acknowledged that “our friends in the labor movement have legitimate concerns.”

The 12-country TPP is strongly supported by groups such as the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, but a populist strain in both parties led to the overwhelming defeat of the first in a series of trade bills on the agreement.

Hawaii Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard opposes TPP. “I think we can and we need to do better,” she said, adding that it was a week “filled with a lot of emotions, a lot of passions.” But she insisted that the process isn’t dividing Democrats, saying that the discord “makes our process stronger.”

Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, like Gabbard one of the keynote speakers at the Democratic dinner, said he strongly supports moving on trade. He says opponents of the deal befuddle him, because “if we don’t have a TPP, China’s going to set the rules for 40 percent of the world.”

“The problems we have with vis-à-vis a trade imbalance with China are only going to be exacerbated” without the deal, though China is not part of the agreement.

He also said that while he understood fellow Democrats concerns about previous trade deals like NAFTA and CAFTA, he insisted this deal holds up substantially better.

“This is not your grandfather’s trade agreement, this is a 21st century trade agreement,” Warner said.

There will be more congressional votes on the trade deal Tuesday.