The New Balance shoe company, with manufacturing facilities in Maine, should be lauded for withdrawing its support for the Trans Pacific Partnership. (President Obama, while touting the agreement, said Vietnam would be one of its biggest beneficiaries. Vietnam’s shoe industry is a big part of the agreement.)

This marked a change in New Balance’s public stance. Early on, they’d opposed TPP. Then they agreed to remain quiet on it (offering tacit approval). Now, again, they oppose it.

Not much is written about New Balance’s original opposition, but New Balance has admitted to having traded its silence on opposition to TPP for assurances of access to Defense Department contracts for athletic shoes for soldiers.

As New Balance spokesman Matt LeBretton told The Boston Globe, “We swallowed the poison pill that is TPP so we could have a chance to bid on these contracts” – on the condition that they would “remain silent” on the trade deal, company CEO Robert DeMartini informed Fox News. Why oppose it now?

Well, progress toward finalization of the military shoe contract for New Balance has been slow. Given this fact, we see why New Balance again opposes the TPP, and we see why they opted to “remain silent” on the deal (though we don’t agree with their doing so).

The “poison pill” of TPP involves much more than just trade. TPP has been described as a budding European Union in the Pacific that creates a self-governing and self-perpetuating commission with detrimental implications for American workers, American immigration law and American sovereignty.

Hopefully, New Balance will stick with its latest position. Congress, for its part, should vote it down.

Burnell Bailey

South Berwick

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