The following letter written by OR Progressive Party State Council member, David Delk, was published in the Oregonian January 1, 2016, and calls for the rejection of the Trans Pacific Partnership corporate trade agreement.

Trans-Pacific Partnership:

The Oregonian editorial board thinks "it's tricky to estimate how many jobs are directly tied to trade, much less how many would be created if the (Trans-Pacific Partnership) is signed." Tricky, indeed, when you only account for part of the jobs equation. Missing from this equation is how many jobs will be destroyed as a result of this agreement.

The U.S.-South Korea trade agreement was the last to go into effect. President Obama said that because of increased export opportunities, 70,000 new jobs would be created and that our trade balance with South Korea would improve. Yet since then, our trade deficit with South Korea has grown, meaning that those new jobs never materialized. In fact, during the agreement's first three years, the trade deficit increased by $11.8 billion, meaning the loss of 75,000 good-paying American jobs.

So it is important to ask the right questions. Since the agreement will encourage off-shoring of investments and jobs and will do nothing to stop currency manipulation, the likelihood of a favorable result from the TPP corporate trade agreement is slim. The TPP should be rejected.

The Oregon Progressive Party's monthly membership meeting approved this statement of opposition to fast tracking of the the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, because it sets "binding policy on Congress and state legislatures relating to patents and copyright, food safety, government procurement, financial regulation, immigration, healthcare, energy, the environment, labor rights and more."

NAFTA is 20.
20 years ago on January 1, 1994, President Clinton signed NAFTA (North American Free Trade Area). Agreement proponents had declared that 170,000 American jobs would be created, exports of American farm products would increase, food prices would decrease, the American balance of trade would be improved. the Mexican economy would be uplifted to be a first class level of prosperity and more.

Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch's new report, NAFTA at 20, points to quite different results. Instead of job creation, we see one million US jobs lost; the lost jobs caused a downward pressure on American wages, thereby increasing inequality within the United States; food prices went up; the US balance of trade with both Mexico and Canada moved from small surplus' to deficits; American manufacturers moved their production south of the border (and later out of Mexico to China and now the new low wage nation of Vietnam); and many environmental and health laws have been challenged in private trade tribunals. The United States has become less food sustainable. Mexican immigration into the US doubled. Read the report yourself here. Listen to or watch Democracy Now! interview with Lori Wallach of Public Citizen on January 3rd, 2014 here. Click here for a list of investor suits challenging laws and regulations under various of these so-called "Free trade Agreements."

NAFTA to become the Trans Pacific Partnership