Clinton opposition to Asia trade pact
'close call': hacked emails
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[October 12, 2016]
By Amanda Becker
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton's
campaign was worried about the "hard balance" she would need to strike
as the presidential candidate prepared to oppose a Pacific trade pact
championed by President Barack Obama that she once supported, according
to emails published on Tuesday by WikiLeaks.
WikiLeaks released its latest batch of apparently hacked personal emails
of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta with exactly four weeks left in
the 2016 presidential campaign before the Nov. 8 election.
White House hopefuls have made trade a key theme of their campaigns,
with the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a prime target for
criticism by both Democrat Clinton and Republican opponent Donald Trump.
In an Oct. 6, 2015, email the day after the Obama administration
finalized the details of the TPP, Clinton speechwriter Dan Schwerin
circulated a new draft of a statement the campaign was preparing about
Clinton's position, according to WikiLeaks.
"This is indeed a hard balance to strike," Schwerin wrote in the email
to a handful of top advisers, "since we don't want to invite mockery for
being too enthusiastically opposed to a deal she once championed, or
over-claiming how bad it is, since it's a very close call on the
merits."
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2016/Oct/12/images/ads/current/christian_village_sda_031616.png)
The next day, as she campaigned in Iowa, the first state to pick
candidates during the nominating contest, the campaign released a
statement from Clinton saying the pact did not meet the "very high" bar
she had set to earn her support.
The Clinton campaign declined to verify the authenticity of the latest
batch of Podesta emails released by WikiLeaks. Podesta told reporters on
Tuesday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation notified him it is
investigating the "criminal" hack of his emails published by WikiLeaks
as part of a broader political hacking probe.
The U.S. government last week formally accused Russia of hacking
Democratic Party organizations in an effort to influence the
presidential election, a charge Russia has denied. As a result, Clinton
campaign officials and supporters have warned that such email releases
could include fraudulent or misleading documents among genuine emails.
Clinton's October 2015 announcement on the TPP came just a week before
the first debate in her primary race against U.S. Senator Bernie
Sanders, a vocal opponent of the deal. Key Democratic constituencies,
such as progressives and organized labor, have also criticized the pact.
Clinton had previously declined to say whether she would support the
TPP, a main tenet of Obama's strategic pivot to Asia that began when she
was his secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, explaining that she wanted
to wait to assess the final negotiated terms.
"I accept the position we're taking but she has generally been more
pro-trade than anti," Clinton strategist Joel Benenson responded to the
draft from Schwerin. "While we're opposing this, don't we want to say
something generally about ensuring American manufacturers can compete
around the world?"
EARLY WARREN MEETINGS
Clinton's nascent campaign began meeting with advisers to U.S. Senator
Elizabeth Warren even before Clinton announced her second White House
bid, according to the hacked emails.
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![](../images/101216pics/news_y43.jpg)
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton listens to former
Vice President Al Gore talk about climate change at a rally at Miami
Dade College in Miami, Florida, U.S. October 11, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy
Nicholson
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In a January 2015 email sent three months before Clinton officially
launched her campaign, Schwerin briefed close aides about a meeting
with a longtime policy adviser to Warren, a firebrand leader of the
Democratic Party's liberal wing.
Warren's team was concerned that Clinton would staff her campaign
with economic advisers that were too closely associated with the
centrist policies of her husband, former President Bill Clinton,
such as those championed by his Treasury secretary, Robert Rubin.
The Warren adviser, Dan Geldon, "laid out a detailed case against
the Bob Rubin school of Democratic policy makers, was very critical
of the Obama administration's choices," Schwerin wrote.
Schwerin said he and Geldon went over a list of recommended hires
that Warren had sent to Clinton. Geldon told him they would be
"watching carefully" to see how Clinton staffed her campaign,
Schwerin wrote.
"They seem wary - and pretty convinced that the Rubin folks have the
inside track with us whether we realize it yet or not," Schwerin
wrote of Warren's advisers. Geldon declined to comment on the email.
Schwerin also added that Geldon expressed "some flexibility on
Glass-Steagall," a Depression-era law that prohibited commercial
banks from engaging in risky trading activities that was repealed
during Bill Clinton's administration. "Said too big too fail is the
bigger issue," Schwerin wrote.
Many Democratic activists believe that reinstating Glass-Steagall
would help prevent future financial crises such as the one that
rocked the U.S. economy in 2008. Warren has said that there are two
ways to break up too-big banks, either based on size alone or by
instituting a modern version of Glass-Steagall. She introduced a
bill in the U.S. Senate to reinstate a version of the law.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2016/Oct/12/images/ads/current/Symphony_lda_091814.png)
Clinton weighed supporting a new Glass-Steagall law but eventually
rejected that route, announcing a risk-based approach for breaking
up banks, according to an email WikiLeaks released on Monday.
(Reporting by Amanda Becker; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Lisa
Shumaker)
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