WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama seems fond of Nike. Golf outings often find him decked out in apparel featuring the swoosh. Now the president is putting the company logo on his trade agenda.
On Friday, the president will visit Nike headquarters in Beaverton, Ore., to make his trade policy pitch as he struggles to win over Democrats for what could be a last major legislative push of his presidency.
But in choosing the giant company that makes sneakers and athletic wear as his backdrop, Obama has stirred a hornet’s nest.
Nike, a major exporter, employs more than 8,500 workers in Oregon, many in design, research or marketing jobs. But of Nike’s slightly more than 1 million factory contract workers, more than nine out of 10 are in Asia, with the largest number in low-wage Vietnam.
“It is a perverse place to try to go and sell a trade agreement that the American public thinks would make it easier to offshore our jobs and push down our wages,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.
For Obama, the trade-dependent Pacific Northwest is a natural place to make his case for trade negotiating authority and to promote a 12-nation Pacific trade agreement.
Congress is debating whether to give Obama so-called fast-track authority to complete that and other trade deals. Obama’s toughest sell is with his own Democratic allies, who fear the loss of American jobs and weakened financial and environmental rules.
Nike, with its outsourcing of manufacturing, provides Obama with an opportunity to talk about labor standards he seeks to enforce with trade partners, particularly Vietnam, where the U.S. concedes worker rights protections fall short. Of the 11 countries the U.S. is negotiating with in the Trans-Pacific talks, Nike has contract factories in seven of them.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest says the stop at Nike will “illustrate how a responsible trade agreement that includes enforceable labor and environmental standards would strongly benefit middle-class families and the American economy.”
