Candidate Hillary's volte-face on TPP

IN A 2012 speech in Australia, then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made it clear that she was a big - more like Big - proponent of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement. "It sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free transparent fair trade," she stated then. "The kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field."

Indeed, there was no "if" or "maybe" or "I am not sure" when it came to her position on the TPP and the rest of President Barack Obama's ambitious global trade agenda at that time. Secretary Clinton - and before that, Senator Clinton from New York - was one of the boosters of the White House's trade policies and a cheerleader for free trade principles in general.

In a way, First Lady Hillary Clinton already found herself in the middle of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) during her husband's presidency. She supported deals with Oman, Chile and Singapore during her tenure in the Senate. And as Secretary of State, she was a chief advocate as talks commenced over the TPP, one of the largest global trade deals in modern history.