Despite Fast Track Vote, Americans Know Trade Deals Fail Miserably, Will Oppose Trans-Pacific Partnership
Statement of Robert Weissman, President, Public Citizen
Following elaborate legislative contortions and gimmicks designed to hand multinational corporations their top priority, today the U.S. Senate paved the way for Fast Track legislation that aims to advance the corporate wish list known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), as well other trade deals.
Those contortions were necessary because the American people overwhelmingly oppose these deals, notwithstanding an endless barrage of propaganda.
They oppose these deals because they know from personal experience that the NAFTA model fails miserably.
They know that these deals will mean more export of jobs and more downward pressure on wages. They know that these deals will undermine our ability to maintain and adopt strong environmental and consumer protections. They know that these deals are designed to help giant corporations, and not communities.
Today’s action means that Congress will tie its hands to prevent it from exerting positive influence over negotiations of the TPP. It means that the final TPP agreement will very likely include provisions empowering foreign corporations to sue our own government for policies that they claim impinge on their expected future profits. It means that the final TPP will very likely include provisions that will extend Big Pharma monopolies, raising prices for consumers and health systems – and, even in the United States, and especially in the poorer TPP countries, denying people access to needed medical treatment. It means that the final TPP will very likely include provisions undermining our food safety.
What it doesn’t mean is that Congress must pass such a TPP. When the inexcusable and anti-democratic veil of secrecy surrounding the TPP is finally lifted, and the American people see what is actually in the agreement, they are going to force their representatives in Washington to vote that deal down. Members who fail to do so can expect their constituents to hold them accountable.
June 26, 2015 @ 5:37 pm
fast track oppose
June 26, 2015 @ 9:40 pm
The republicans who would not support anything that would make Pres. Obama look good went overboard to push the TPA through. They left out TAA, without it when jobs go overseas there is no help for those who will lose their jobs. If Pres . Obama thinks they will vote for it latter he is dreaming .
June 27, 2015 @ 9:53 am
What Congress and the Administration just did was tell the American people “we don’t represent you, we represent the people paying for us to get into office.” How much plainer can they say it?
June 27, 2015 @ 2:39 pm
Robert, let us hope and pray that when we finally see the version that Congress votes on, if it is a truly bad deal, our representatives and Senators actually listen to their constituents. Far too often they magically vote as they please. I wonder why that is?
June 27, 2015 @ 5:30 pm
TPP is simply this: A corporate attempt to take over the economic policy and goals of the U.S. from government and turn it from benefiting the country and people of the U.S. to their own coffers-even more than it is now. Enough with spending money to elect our people and hire lobbyists; let’s just take down the government (Senate, mostly)rule and regulation powers and replace it with our own (WTO) court. Think of the money we will make and costs we will reduce (they say). Will enough simple-minded Congress persons buy it? Let’s see.
August 1, 2015 @ 5:52 am
It’s even worse than people realize. I studied trade the structure & workings of trade agreements like this in law school, & in my opinion it’s nothing less than a legal coup de gras for global self interested corporate dominance.
It provides a legal enforcement mechanism that in effect supersedes & overrides the individual signatory countries’ democratically enacted laws, permitting us to be sued if we enact any laws that “frustrate corporate “expectations” (profits), which cases will be heard in a kangaroo court presided over by the same corporate lawyers who wrote the over-reaching “private laws” (to which Obama is agreeing on our behalf) that go far beyond what is permitted in US intellectual property law, for instance, down here among us mere plebes.
The TPP corporate lawyers are doing in trade agreement law what ALEC has been doing for (or “to”) Congress: drafting outrageously self-interested laws with absolutely no regard for anything but their own profits, unconscionably so. (See Monsanto Protection Act” devised so Monsanto doesn’t have to spend money trying to defeat state efforts to learn what’s in our food supply, that just passed the House).
Under Obama’s TPP, get ready for more outrageous drug prices & no exceptions for fair use & other exceptions to similar laws the TPP has undoubtedly attempted to override. The TPP has in fact provided corporations the ability to not only write & enforce (with no appeals allowed although the tribunals make a mockery of the idea of impartial judges) the law as they’d like it to be & to hell with the notion of democratic self-governance. (Democracy is so inefficient, doncha know). We’re no longer allowed to legislate for ourselves. They’ll now have the ability to sail over and above any signatory country’s laws. Ask Canada how that’s working, since it’s been sued for enforcing its patent laws, thereby making meds more affordable.
Despite the fact that democratic government is predicated on a populace well informed & intelligent enough to make critical choices in self-government, that has somehow been stolen from us when we weren’t looking. We are not allowed to know exactly what the laws that weren’t leaked, but it’s entirely likely that Obama, the Democrats who joined him (Murray, Cantwell, & Larsen in WA) & the usual pro-BBB suspect Republicans have sold not only labor but the environment & any attempt to regulate for the benefit of our own health, financial, safety & social welfare down the river in a way we’ll regret for a long time to come.
We should have listened to Bernie & Warren.