The Trans Pacific Partnership was just signed in New Zealand. But it is nothing more than a 5,000-page doorstop unless majorities in the House and Senate approve it and the president signs the implementing legislation.
Now that the deal has been signed, every elected official must take a public position on the TPP.
The majority of Democrats in the House oppose the deal, as does a large bloc of Republicans. All U.S. presidential candidates with more than 5 percent support in any state oppose the deal, and vibrant TPP opposition movements are growing across the country and around the world. As one might expect for a deal negotiated behind closed doors for seven years with 500 corporate representatives serving as official U.S. trade advisers and with the public and Congress cut out, the TPP would:
Make it easier for corporations to offshore American jobs.Push down our wages by throwing Americans into competition with Vietnamese workers making less than 65 cents an hour.Flood us with unsafe imported food.Raise our medicine prices.Include notorious violators of international human rights.Eliminate most of the seven Multilateral Environmental Agreements that are the standards for the Environment Chapter.Expand the scope of domestic policies that can be challenged by corporations, including allowing investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) enforcement of World Trade Organization intellectual property terms and new challenges to financial regulations. This is especially dangerous because the TPP would double U.S. exposure to ISDS challenges – empowering an additional 9,200 corporation to use ISDS tribunal to attack our laws.
It is clearer than ever that this is not a deal we should support.
Laurie Roberts
Bayfield
