Have you heard? The TPP is a massive, controversial, pro-corporate “free trade” agreement among the United States and 11 other countries – Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. Although it is called a “trade” agreement, the TPP is not mainly about trade. Of TPP’s 30 chapters, only six deal with traditional trade issues.
Secret TPP Text Unveiled: It’s Worse than We Thought
In early November 2015, after seven years of close-door negotiations with the public, press and policymakers locked out, the final TPP text was released. In chapter after chapter, the final text is worse than expected, with the demands of the 500 official U.S. trade advisers representing corporate interests satisfied to the detriment of the public interest.The text reveals that the pact replicates many of the most controversial terms of past pacts that promote job offshoring and push down U.S. wages.
If passed, the TPP would:
- make it easier for big corporations to ship our jobs overseas, pushing down our wages and increasing income inequality,
- flood our country with unsafe imported food,
- jack up the cost of medicines by giving big pharmaceutical corporations new monopoly rights to keep lower cost generic drugs off the market,
- empower corporations to attack our environmental and health safeguards,
- ban Buy American policies needed to create green jobs,
- roll back Wall Street reforms,
- sneak in SOPA-like threats to Internet freedom,
- and undermine human rights.
The TPP can take effect only if the U.S. Congress approves it, and its fate in Congress is uncertain at best. Fast Track trade authority only passed through Congress by the narrowest of margins after a series of legislative maneuvers, with reluctant support from some key swing members contingent upon certain provisions being in the final TPP. The released text shows these concerns have been largely ignored.
And an unprecedented array of organizations have joined together in a powerful and diverse coalition to stop the TPP. Groups united on this extend well beyond labor unions and include consumer, Internet freedom, senior, health, food safety, environmental, human rights, faith, student and civil rights organizations. Opposition to the TPP is growing at home and in many of the other countries involved.
Se puede encontrar recursos en español aquí.
Featured Resources:
- UPDATED Initial TPP Text Analysis: Secret TPP Text Unveiled: It’s Worse than We Thought
- Compilation: Early Statements from Labor, Consumer, Enviro, Etc. Organizations After TPP Text Release
- TPP Corporate Empowerment Map: See which foreign corporations near you could use NAFTA-style investor rights to challenge laws and regulations under the TPP
- Case Studies: Investor-State Attacks on Public Interest Policies
- Map: What Would the TPP Mean For Your State?
- Memo: Investors Use Runaway “Fair and Equitable Treatment” Standard in 75% of “Successful” Cases Against Governments
U.S. negotiators are pushing the agenda of Big Pharma – expanding firms’ monopoly protections for drugs. The TPP would restrict access to life-saving medicines for millions in developing nations, while undermining efforts to contain U.S. medicine costs.
The TPP would undermine the re-regulation of Wall Street. It would prohibit bans on risky financial products and services and undermine “too big to fail” regulations.
The TPP would impose limits on how our elected officials can use tax dollars – banning Buy American or Buy Local preferences and offshoring our tax dollars to create jobs abroad.
Foreign corporations would be empowered to attack our health, environmental and other laws before foreign tribunals on the mere basis that their expectations were frustrated, and to demand taxpayer compensation for expected future profits.
NOTE: The new relations with Cuba will hurt Floridians the most. 1. Miami and Orlando will lose tourism to Cuba. 2. Manufacturing will move from Florida to Cuba. and 3. Agricultural products grown in Florida will be imported from Cuba. The few doing business with Castro will benefit, but not the Cuban people nor the American people.
