Guest writer

What's it all about?

Trade bill secrecy disturbing

Editor's note: This column was written before the June 19 publication on this page of a column by French Hill and Randy Veach about current trade legislation.

As an uneducated layman, I don't know what to think about President Barack Obama's sweeping Trans-Pacific Partnership proposal currently under congressional consideration. Do you? According to some media reports, members of Congress have to visit the White House to glimpse it, only to glean small specifics, and told to speak only in generalities in regards to it.

And yes, outside of Internet conspiracy theorists, it seems reputable media outlets can offer nothing more than phrases like "21st Century economy," "broad Pacific Rim agreement," and "landmark trade bill." About as specific as Hillary Clinton's take: "Let's take the lemons and turn it into lemonade."

What?

As a small-business owner, when I first heard of this lack of specificity on a proposal this large with its essence clouded in secrecy, my first thoughts are outsourcing profits, obscuring and hiding assets offshore for huge companies and conglomerates, and a loss of good U.S. jobs. Is that the true intent?

I'm in the furniture business, and it's saddened me over the years to see the products I purchase become over 80 percent imported. Truthfully, in my business, outside of mattresses and upholstery, you can't do it any other way.

Which brings one back in time, to 1994, when Bill Clinton and the Democrats sold the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to America. Now ask over 400 people in Fort Smith (only a fraction nationwide who have been affected by this) how that worked out for them, after Whirlpool sent their jobs to Mexico.

That makes the current coalition between Obama and Republican lawmakers (versus his normally staunch Democratic allies) all the more mystifying. By all accounts, it seems Arkansas congressmen Bruce Westerman, French Hill, Steve Womack and Rick Crawford, and Sens. Tom Cotton and John Boozman either support or will go along with this.

Which begs the question: Is this a tacit admission to their indentured servitude toward billionaire business, or are they truly admitting a president who've they said could do nothing right finally has done so, on an issue that really and truly is bigger economically than the Affordable Care Act they so vilify?

It's an important question, and maybe electorally, a tough pill to swallow if voters aren't as dumb as most in Washington judge them to be.

Perhaps I'm a dinosaur, and I'm certainly no economist, but history has proven that economies and nations that become overwhelmingly consumer-driven versus the making and manufacturing of goods and products simply sold ultimately decline. Sadly, we are already in that dilemma as we speak in the United States, and the lack of information I've garnered on this trade agreement leads me to believe it will only deepen that spiral.

Still, I'd like to be wrong, so I'd challenge Westerman, Hill, Crawford, Womack, Cotton, and Boozman to pen a letter to Arkansans in this paper specifying in concise, honest, but understandable terms how this proposal will both help and hurt (because let's be honest, we don't all fall under the same umbrella) the people in our state.

I look forward to your responses.

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Anthony Lloyd is the owner of Factory Direct Home Furnishings in Hot Springs.

Editorial on 06/26/2015

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