Major NY business leader backs trade deal

 
The head of one of the most important U.S. business associations backed President Obama’s proposed global trade agreement Sunday.
 
Kathryn Wylde, the president and CEO of the Partnership for NYC, argued that the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) bill currently in Congress was essential for American economic growth.
 
“95 percent of the world’s consumers live outside the borders of the United States,” Wylde told host John Catsimatidis on his radio show “The Cats Roundtable.”
 
{mosads}“And if we don’t open up trade agreements with them, if we don’t have the ability to sell goods and services made in America to those countries, then we are losing jobs,” she said.
 
“We cannot survive and grow as a country and as a city … unless we have the ability to access these growing markets,” Wylde added. “If we don’t capture those opportunities, we will no longer be the strongest economy in the world.”
 
Wylde also criticized a growing sense of isolationism she sensed in U.S. economic policy. Such attitudes, she argued, were counterproductive to the nation’s prosperity.
 
“There’s a growing sense that somehow we have to hunker down and ignore the rest of the world and try and protect ourselves,” Wylde said.
 
“We can’t do that — certainly not we in New York who depend on the global economy,” she said. 
 
“For New York, this is important because 25 percent of our merchandize exports are going to the 11 countries that are covered by this agreement.”
 
Obama has faced an uphill battle against his own party over the potential deal. He met with House Democrats on Friday in an effort to win them over on the trade legislation.
 
Many Democrats worry approving the TPA would lose American jobs to outsourcing overseas.
 
The president, meanwhile, has countered that approving the deal would lead to new jobs spurned on by fresh market opportunities abroad. He has argued that this, in turn, would generate economic growth.
 
The Trans-Pacific Partnership Obama seeks would create a free-trade pact between the U.S. and a dozen Pacific Rim nations. 
 
Japanese President Shinzo Abe, a major supporter of the deal, helped Obama advocate for the deal while visiting the U.S. last week.
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