Why Hillary Clinton deserves credit for changing her mind about TPP

The political press sees only the darkest motives in Clinton's about-face. But Clinton gets it right on the policy and the politics.

Hillary Clinton
(Image credit: AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

Hillary Clinton made an about-face on the Trans-Pacific Partnership this week, after calling it the "gold standard" of trade agreements when she was secretary of state and even praising it in her book Hard Choices. Now she says, "I am not in favor of what I have learned about it."

This doesn't exactly ring true. Clinton surely knows as much about TPP as anyone outside the actual negotiators, and by all accounts the actual content of the pact has improved since 2012. So her comment sparked a lot of snickering among the political press, who are always looking for new angles to Get Clinton. Others on the center-left pronounced themselves worried. Ezra Klein argued that this reversal is of apiece with Clinton's disturbing habit of endorsing dumb populism against the advice of sensible economists and policy wonks, like the time she came out for a temporary repeal of the gas tax in 2008.

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.