globalization

OPP calls for end to TPP negotiations, No Fast Track Authority for President

OPP calls for end to negotiations of more NAFTA-style trade agreements and no Fast Track Authority for the President

 President Obama has asked for Fast Track Authority to ram more NAFTA-style corporate trade deals through Congress in 2015.  Fast Track Authority and these agreements (WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA, US-So Korea, US-Columbia, US-Israel, etc.) are further manifestation of the continuing corporate assualt on democracy, the People and the environment. These agreements have historically lead to increased trade deficits, job loss, attacks on the environment, declining public health, increasing income and wealth inequalities, and suits by foreign corporations against national governments to negate beneficial changes in public policy, regulations and laws. 

 While these agreements have resulted in job and environmental losses, Americans have received a flow of cheaply made goods manufactured aboard with little concern for the labor or environmental consequences.  Those goods, formerly manufactured in the US, represent low-paid labor input and an ever increasing carbon footprint caused by the long shipping distances.  The United States is increasingly becoming the natural resources source for manufacturing in off-shore plants, so the shipping has to go both ways. 

So, when the President and his largely Republican and corporate-friendly Democratic party allies in Congress now talk about making passage of Fast Track Authority and the Trans Pacific Partnership the number one area of cooperation in the new Congress, we must demand that the President stop negotiating these new agreements and that Congress not grant him Fast Track Authority.

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