Clinton Defends Flip-Flopping on TPP: ‘There Are Enough Unanswered Questions’

UNKNOWN REPORTER: "Thank you very much for your comments. With respect to TPP, I would like to understand a little bit better why you oppose it, and what changes would perhaps make it acceptable to you?"
CLINTON: "I think — you know, there are two problems that I see with it. One the final language of the treaty itself, which I don’t think went far enough to meet the test that I’ve always applied to any trade agreement — I have voted for them and I have voted against them when I was a senator — does it help to create more good paying jobs in America? Does it raise incomes, does it advance our national security? And I think there are enough unanswered questions. It was an — it was an extraordinary effort to try to bring these countries together to come up with an agreement, but I think that at the end of the day, for a number of reasons, including that they couldn’t figure how to get currency into the agreement and it’s only in a side agreement, I opposed it. The other side of the coin, though, is we have been doing so little — because of Republican opposition, mostly, to better train and prepare people who have been, really, either sidelined or whacked up in — against their head by globalization. Globalization is real, it’s happening, it’s having an impact. We don’t have a good training program, we don’t have the kind of support that people need to be able to move into positions where they can acquire new skills. And I see those two things as going together because we have to first and foremost focus on how we better prepare more Americans to be competitive in the global economy, and I don’t think we’ve done that. I want to see that done alongside any trade agreement to a greater extent than the Republicans have been willing to support it."